GIS projection for non-geographic data

Question

I am working on two different types of data. One is related to mapping of Genome structure and another is creating a layout of the inventories inside Internet Data Center.

What I am confused about is what kind of projection do we use (if any) is such conditions. The reason using GIS APIs here is very helpful is that these projects also require the same layering of the information. So how do I create or structure the data?

Should it also be shapefiles? What should their projections be? Can I use a shapefile to be hosted in Geoserver without projections?

Please let me know if you need any more info.

Answer 1

I guess you want to use Geoserver for tiled mapping, so your data range corresponds to the world? I can see two approaches:

a) pre-normalize data. Multiply all the values with X (X=max(yourvalue)*180), so the result ranges from -180 to 180 in degrees (for Wgs84) and then set this SRID to your data

b) create PROJ string which can convert your existing data value range to Wgs84 range, i.e. same -180 to 180 longitude, -90 to 90 latitude.

Answer 2

As far as I know, the usual convention in scenarios in which spatial data has not an associated projection is setting the SRID code value to -1. This will work, at least, if using PostGIS to store the spatial data.