Development

Geospatial Business Intelligence (GeoBI), combining GIS and BI technologies, has recently stirred marked interest for the huge potential of combining spatial analysis and map visualization with proven BI tools and techniques such as data warehousing (DW), On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), ... A complete open source GeoBI suite is now available at http://www.spatialytics.org. It comprises: 1) GeoKettle, a spatial ETL tool targeted for geo-analytical data warehousing, 2) GeoMondrian, a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server which extends the open source Mondrian OLAP server with GIS data types and functions and 3) GeoBIExt (extending the formerly known SOLAPLayers project), a rich client visualization framework for SOLAP data, using GeoExt/OpenLayers as the web mapping front-end. It enables the creation of drillable and interactive geo-analytical dashboards or more static reports, which allow the analyze of data through different representations (maps, charts and cross-tabs) and levels of detail in order to take more informed and hence better decisions. The GeoBIExt framework is composed of a server part which acts as a relay between the different data sources and the client part for interactive visualisation and exploration of geo-analytical data.

The Postal Address Geocoder (or PAGC) is an open source library and web service framework for geocoding locations based on either postal addresses, street intersections, or landmarks. The system offers a number of features that differentiate it from other open source geocoding software solutions:

• PAGC is written in ANSI C it runs on all major operating systems, and can be easily ported to nearly all operating systems
• PAGC is pre-configured to use data from several different providers (TIGER/Line, Statistics Canada's Road Network File, and others), and through the creation of a simple configuration file, it can easily work with data from a large number of other providers
• PAGC makes use of an advanced three-method probabilistic matching algorithm to provide the greatest possible match rate for street addresses
• PAGC can be used with multiple input data sources (shapefiles, SQLite database tables, and, soon, PostgreSQL/PostGIS database tables), and data stores (BerkeleyDB, SQLite, with PostgreSQL in the works)
• PAGC has the ability to provide an ID number in addition to geographic coordinates, which can greatly simplify database operations for location-based applications
• PAGC allows the user to edit road segment address ranges on the fly, enabling the user to overcome suppressed or altered address ranges frequently encountered in government originated road network layers

In this talk we will briefly discuss the history of the PAGC project, but really focus on the products features and recent developments (particularly as it relates to advances in data source and data store options) and the PAGC feature set road map (including better internationalization, a reverse geocoder, and a number of others) . In addition, we will present a demonstration of a location-based service that is made possible by using PAGC as a core underlying technology.

Business Intelligence (BI) Technologies can integrate, compare and analyze large amounts of data from many different sources using tools, software and standards for data integration (ETL), data warehouse, OLAP server (Online Analytical Processing), the MDX query language (MultiDimentional eXpression), data mining, dashboards and reporting. Get an overview of the Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI) technologies like BIRT, JasperSoft, Pentaho and SpagoBI, who now have millions of users from several millions downloads and how you can integrate geospatial, mapping and thematic mapping using FOSS4G and FOSS4GeoBI.