Tell me more ×
Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for cartographers, geographers and GIS professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite
1

To complete my thesis i have to develop mobile GIS application which will test/handle some issue related to visualization presentation of geographical/spatial information on mobile devices.

I will test the application usability in lab(desktop environment)and application should contain two ,three data layers belong to one specific domain

Where to start , which is best tool to develop such application prototype, how will i test usability concerns with that application.

Thanks in advance

share|improve this question
2  
Which mobile device are you supposed to use? – underdark♦ Jul 6 '11 at 12:31

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

I had much the same requirement for my undergrad dissertation, and I decided to go with OpenLayers to minimise the programming required for my mobile device (an HTC Desire running Android). All it took on the mobile side was an app with a browser window that opened up the site with my GIS data on it, so it wouldn't be a very hard to create say an iPhone application with the same look and feel.

OpenLayers supports mobile browsing fairly well, and can deal with WFS-T if you need to edit data on your device.

Of course, you will need a server to connect to, but for initial testing I just set up a linux virtual machine on my development PC running mapserver and lighttpd, then I used a cloud hosting service for when I wanted to test it in the field. This meant it was fairly painless to transfer the configuration I had on my local VM to the cloud VM because both of them were headless (i.e. no GUI) Ubuntu JeOS distros.

share|improve this answer
1  
(+1) An alternative to mapserver would be to run GeoServer. My personal preference. – CaptDragon Jul 6 '11 at 16:46
Indeed. It is easier to set up with its web-based frontend, and supports WFS-T, whereas you need tinyows with MapServer. GeoServer does require Apache and Tomcat (or similar) which can bloat an installation, but for a thesis this shouldn't be a problem. – MerseyViking Jul 6 '11 at 16:53
up vote 0 down vote

Have a look at gvSIG - http://www.gvsig.org They have a gvSIG mobile product which seems quite good (never had a play though). Its open-source and Java based.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.