Distributing proprietary geographic data on the World Wide Web — UCLA GIS Database and Map Server

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) GIS Database and Map Server project is a cooperative effort of GIS-interested-parties on the UCLA campus, to deliver centrally-stored geographic data via the World Wide Web (WWW). Both geographic data and geo-referenced remotely sensed image data are served from this site. The main objective of this project is to serve gigabytes of data using limited online disk space, used to store the most-recently-requested data units, and a large tape robot for the offline storage of all the data in the central database. ArcView Internet Map Server (IMS) is employed as the interactive GIS mapping server and visual interface for downloading the data from the central database. The server design, database design and web client interface were developed to incorporate a visual interface, to distribute proprietary geo-data and to provide GIS capabilities.