LIAS Data Architecture Prototype

For each of the RIT-components in the above diagram, I will briefly describe the current capabilities, the current shortcomings, and the near-term plans.

First, some screenshots...

Crawler

Capabilities

• Plows through a directory from a flight
• Automatically discovers the image data and headers
• Automatically uses header information to group images into flight legs based on (temporal and spatial) proximity
• Automatically groups adjacent flight legs into clusters based on (temporal and spatial) proximity
• Automatically determines the bounding (convex) polygon for each cluster
• Automatically creates records in the database for:
  • Each flight
  • Each cluster
  • Each leg
  • Each image
• Talks through the server to access the database
• Can ignore subdirectories or files based on regular expressions

Shortcomings

• Does not start a new flight leg when there has been a significant heading change
• Does not create thumbnails for the images
• No crawler for MISI data

Near-term Plans

• Have it connect to the database server instead (1/2 day or less)
• Have it start a new flight leg when there has been a significant heading change (2 days)
• Add in ability to ignore certain subdirectories (1 day)
• Create thumbnails for the images (2+ days)

Database Server

Capabilities

• Database abstraction through code-generation and custom Polygon and Point class
• Accessible remotely
• Tables to store:
  • Data types
  • Flights
  • Clusters
  • Legs
  • Data files
    • Images
      • Geoimages
        • Flight-based images
          • WASP Images
      • Thumbnails
  • Annotations
  • Users
• Allows spatial or temporal searches
• Allows one to find:
  • Clusters given flight
  • Legs given cluster
  • Flight-based images given leg

Shortcomings

• No tables for MISI images
• No searches which combine spatial and temporal information
• No searches which allow one to:
  • Find images given cluster
  • Find images given flight
  • Find images in a given area restricted by leg/cluster/flight
• Occasionally, an RMI thing bombs out serializing with a UTF exception trying to read/write a string. I can't think of how I could be causing this or how I could prevent it... but, it's definitely a problem... though it may just be my firewall....

Near-term Plans

• Add some MISI tables
• Add some more searches:
  • Find images that aren't in this list but are in a given area and belong to one of the legs in this list (2 days)
  • How many images/legs/clusters are in this area? (1 day)
• Try replacing my firewall? (1 day)

Sidebar Interface

Capabilities

• Shows hierarchy of known flights, flight clusters, and flight legs
• Allows one to select/deselect flight/cluster/leg
• Allows one to switch map mode between clusters and legs

Shortcomings

• Does not yet care about images on flight legs
• Does not allow one to switch map mode to images yet
• Will happily let you try to display every leg of every cluster of every flight
• Download button not hooked into anything yet
• Does not yet allow one to view thumbnails from a leg (depends on "Thumbnail" feature in crawler)

Near-term Plans

• Add in bits to wheedle down to images (1 day)
• Warn people when they're trying to display tons of stuff on the map (depends on "How many" feature in the database server (1-2 days)
• At least mock-up the download button to list the stuff you have selected (2+ days)

Applet-GoogleMaps Bridge

Capabilities

• Displays markers at the beginning of flight clusters
• Shows cluster info in the marker
• Allows one to display the bounds of a cluster
• Displays lines for flight legs with a marker at the start
• Marker for flight legs shows info about the leg

Shortcomings

• Markers for flight clusters should say how many legs and how many images are in that cluster (depends on "How many" feature in server)
• Markers for flight legs should say how many images are on that leg (depends on "How many" feature in server)
• On demo day (though not since), I managed to wedge the Google Maps server into sending me a blank, immovable map with a 'Katrina' button on it. I have not been able to repeat it since demo day.... but if there's something that I am doing that caused that at all, I'd like to nuke it

Near-term Plans

• Not sure, until I can find a way to repeat the 'Katrina' bug

-- PatrickStein - 14 Oct 2005