1. Web map application for presidential elections 2006
Nordic Forum for Geo-statistics 2006
Kongsvinger
Liisa Kanerva
My name is Liisa Kanerva, I am from Statistics Finland department of Information services.
My subject is the Web Map application for presidential elections 2006
As you might remember from last year, the technology of our web map services went out of date. That was because ESRA’s previous software MOIMS couldn’t be ported onto XP platform.
Due to lack of the time and resources we decided to buy the solution A company named Smilehous won the competition bidding.

2. Web map application for presidential elections 2006
Application functionality
Application technology
Summary
At first I would like to demo you the functionality of the application.
After that I will tell you about the technology, quite generally, and the difficulties we found when building the application
and finally I will summarise how we felt about the outcome.
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019

3. Application technology
Browser
The user interface is implemented with
Javascript
Data and maps are updated by passing
ArcXML requests and responses to and from
the Map server
XHTML,CSS, Javascript, XmlHttpRequest
Web Server Java 2,JRE
HTTP (ArcXML)
Application Server J2EE Servlets
ArcIMS needs Java 2 components to build and administer Web sites.
Map Server
ArcIMS/Image server
Map Server has responsibility for drawing maps and sending them as Web-appropriate images
dbf
shape
...And we take a look at the technology of this solution..
the user interface, as you noticed, lies on the browser. It is implemented with XHTML and Javascript.
The client communicate utilising HTTP and the messages are written in arcXML.
The web server includes besides IIS 6 also Java 2 components . ArcIMS needs Java components to build and administer the web sites.
And finally there are the ArcIMS map server who takes care of rendering and drawing the maps etc.
We had the election’s results in the tables inside MSSQL -server so we needed a module to create dbf-tables for shapefiles.
JDBC
CreateDbf
MSSQL
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019

4. Plug-ins The histogram is implemented using JFreeChar- library 1 2
PDF printouts utilize iText -library
JPG- and PNG conversion utilize Java2D-library
For some elements in the application we looked for plug-in.
First there is the histogram. For it a library called JFreeChart was found .
And the next ones works to convert outputs: PDF layouts utilise iText-library and JPG- and PNG conversions Java2D-library,
All those libraries can be downloaded from the NET free of charge. 2 1
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019

5. Call offs Vector format inside PDF Stress tests
Then we had some problems. There was some features in our scheme we couldn’t get
For the printed media we wanted to have vector maps inside PDF. But It was possible that only raster images could wrap inside PDF in the ArcIMS solution like ours. That was a very disappointing thing for us.
The other one kept us excited. We knew from experience that to create the PDF-layout is a very heavy process for the machine. So we wanted the stress tests to be done for the application. How ever our supplier couldn’t find any tools for those tests. So we bought some extra storage and hoped for the best. .
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019

6. Hitches Default classification method and colour for every theme
A site without frames
Direct links to the service
The supplier had no experience of statistical thematic maps. They found it very tricky to understand why statisticians wanted to do so sophisticated work such as our default colours and classifications. They were quite sure that it would be impossible to get reasonable source code from such a complicated thing. After all the problem was solved with decision tables .
In Statistics Finland our www pages are all without frames. That’s because we want it possible to give a direct link to a particular page. Frames are very useful in applications where you have updates here and there on the page. But no frames was no questions.
With the direct links the supplier made good by putting users selections in the anchor of the address line on the browser.
The solution for the frame less page, meanwhile, was to update the page by remoulding the structure of the Document Object Module of the page.
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019

7. Summary
Finally, in five months, we had a solution which, definitely, is very fast and very informative but may be not so easy to use, quite worthy anyway although we had more higher ambitions and plans.
That was pretty much all I had.
Liisa Kanerva
22/04/2019