Overview: Design an Open-Source GIS built solely on Open-Source technology. The GIS will be capable of using MySQL 5.0 or later and or postGRE with the postGIS extension as a backend database. Recieve data from ESRI datasets and store them in appropriate format for the data base. The GIS system will be written in Ruby using the Open-Source Geo-Ruby extensions. Ruby will allow the program to be run on multiple platforms, and provide me experience with the language. The GIS will be able to output data in KML format for display in map format. Eventually The GIS software will be able to incorporate 3 dimensional objects and do analysis on them. Project Scope Phase I will include the interface from one or two of the backend systems and the basic GIS interface. The ESRI import feature, and the KML output feature. That would provide the basic backbone of the system, and should be reasonable for one semester.
