The document discusses the integration of MongoDB with the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community, emphasizing its potential as a spatial database for handling geospatial data. It outlines the challenges of using existing systems like PostGIS and presents a GDAL driver designed for MongoDB to enhance its GIS capabilities. Additionally, it highlights the evolution of spatial database technologies and advocates for a collaborative approach to further develop MongoDB as a viable option in the GIS landscape.

1. Giving MongoDB the way to play with the GIS community
To make GIScience directly supported by the NoSQL Technology, so prepared for BIG DATA ERA
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Geographical Information Technology, Nanjing University.
Cyber-Infrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory (CIGI),
Department of Geography, School of Earth, Society and Environment,
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA),
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
Jun. 25, 2014
Hanson Shuai Zhang
shuai@illinois.edu

2. Spatial Pyramid – View the world with multiple spatiotemporal scales
1
 Real world example - Spatial Pyramid
 Challenges with PostGIS
 Handling with MongoDB cluster

3. Global
North
America
Canada U.S.A.
Illinois
Champaign
UIUC
Campus
Downtown
Chicago
New York
Asia
South Asia East Asia
China
Shanghai Beijing
Olympic
Park
Xidan
Street
Japan
Spatial Pyramid | Introduction

4. Open
Layers
Internet
Leaflets
ArcJs
Spatial Pyramid | PostGIS in the Open Stack
LAN
uDig
QGIS
GRASS
ArcGIS
Mapserver
GeoServer
ArcServer
PostGIS

5. Spatial Pyramid | Generator Architecture
Spatial Pyramid Generator Architecture
Data Server
Spatial
Pyramid
Generator
PostGIS
HPC Cluster
Pyrimad Model
Python
OGR, MPI
Postgre
SQL
What is ArcSDE 8?
2.3 hours !!

6. Spatial Pyramid | MongoDB Approach
SpatialPyramid
Requests
Load Balance
MongoS
P
S
S
P
S
S
MongoS
Shard
Shard
C
C C
Config
GDAL/OGR
15 minutes !!

7.  Open Source
– GDAL is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license
– supported by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
 A library for geospatial data formats
– abstract data model conformed to OGC standards.
– 133 raster data formats, 79 vector data formats
 Widely used by the GIS community
– 88 software listed in the gdal.org using GDAL
 Basic Library for HPGC
– We use GDAL as the basic tools to build high performance computing algorithms
Spatial Pyramid | GDAL Library

8. a
Spatial Pyramid | GDAL Architecture

9. GDAL Driver for MongoDB
– Giving MongoDB the way to play with the GIS community
2
 View MongoDB as a spatial database
 Design GDAL Driver for MongoDB
 Cooperate with other GIS tools

10. FID Geometry Name States Time Zone
10001 POINT(40.77, 73.98) NYC New York UTC-05:00
10002 POINT(41.90, 87.65) Chicago Illinois UTC-06:00
Feature – a spatial object
Point
Line
Polygon
Geometries
Attributes, Non-Spatial Data
GDAL | spatial database structure
Spatial Relational Table
1
2
3

11. GDAL | spatial database structure
https://lib.stanford.edu/gis
Tables – Layers
Rows – Features
Where is
RDBS

12. GDAL | Simple Feature Access

13. RDBMS GeoDatabase MongoDB
Database Datasource Database
Table Layer Collection
Row(s) Feature(s) JSON Document
Field(s) Field(s) Key:Value
Index R tree Index
Join Join Embedding & Linking
Partition — Shard
GDAL | Terminology

14.  WKT, Well-known text, originally defined by the Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC) and described in their Simple Feature Access and
Coordinate Transformation Service specifications.
GDAL | WKT for Spatial data
Type Examples
Point POINT (30 10)
LineString LINESTRING (30 10, 10 30, 40 40)
Polygon
POLYGON ((30 10, 10 20, 20 40, 40 40, 30 10))
POLYGON ((35 10, 10 20, 15 40, 45 45, 35 10),
(20 30, 35 35, 30 20, 20 30))
 In total, there are 18 distinct geometric objects that can be represented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text

15. GDAL | WKT for Spatial data
{
GEM: POINT(41.90, 87.65)
FID:10002
Name: Chicago,
States: Illinois,
Time Zone: UTC-06:00,
}
FID Geometry Name States Time Zone
10001 POINT(40.77, 73.98) NYC New York UTC-05:00
10002 POINT(41.90, 87.65) Chicago Illinois UTC-06:00
WKT
Geospatial Metadata collection

16. GDAL | WKT for Spatial data
U.S.A
States
Cities
Canada
Roads
G_sys_Metadata
MongoDB Cluster
NYC
Chicago
……
Database
Collection
WKT
Feature
Layer
Datasource
|c_name | coord_d | src | type | Extent|
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Cities | 2 | 4326 | Point | [p1,p2]
| States | 2 | 4326 | Polygon | [p1,p2]
No spatial Index

17. GDAL | GeoJSON for spatial data
FID Geometry Name States Time Zone
10001 POINT(40.77, 73.98) NYC New York UTC-05:00
10002 POINT(41.90, 87.65) Chicago Illinois UTC-06:00
{
type: "Feature",
properties:
{
FID:10002
Name: Chicago,
States: Illinois,
Time Zone: UTC-06:00,
},
geometry:
{
type: "Point",
coordinates: [ 41.90 87.63]
}
}
GeoJSON
Geospatial Metadata collection

18. U.S.A
States
Cities
Canada
Roads
G_sys_Metadata
MongoDB Cluster
NYC
Chicago
……
Database
Collection
GeoJSON
Feature
Layer
Datasource
|c_name | coord_d | src | type | Extent|
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Cities | 2 | 4326 | Point | [p1,p2]
| States | 2 | 4326 | Polygon | [p1,p2]
GDAL | GeoJSON for spatial data

19. World
Canada
U.S.A
Oceans
Rivers
Cities
MongoDB Cluster
States
Rivers
……
Database
Collection
FeatureCollection
Layer
Dataset
Datasource
GDAL | FeatureCollection
{
"type": "FeatureCollection",
" crs " :{…}
" bbox " :[….]
"features":
[
{
"type": "Feature",
"geometry":
{
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": […]
},
"properties":
{"prop0": "value0"}
},
…
]
}

20. GDAL | Terminology
* FeatureCollection for GeoJSON format
RDBMS MongoDB GeoDatabase WKT GeoJSON FTCL*
Database Database Datasource Datasource Datasource Datasource
Table Collection Layer Layer Layer Dataset
Row(s)
JSON
Document
Feature Feature Feature Layer
Index Index R tree — Grid Index Grid Index
Join
Embedding &
Linking
Join
Embedding &
Linking
Embedding &
Linking
Embedding &
Linking
Partition Shard — Shard Shard Shard

21. GDAL | who is better?
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text
** http://geojson.org/geojson-spec.html
Features WKT GeoJSON Feature Collection
Structure Flexible & Tight Semi- Semi- & un-
Spatial Index NO Grid Index Grid Index
Efficiency SLOW FAST MEDIUM
Self-explanatory NO YES with semi- YES
Easy-sharing MEDIUM MEDIUM CONVENIENT
Geometry types ALL SFA, 18* LIMITED, 6** LIMITED, 6**

22.  ogr2ogr
– convert simple features data between file formats
– spatial or attribute selections, reducing the set of attributes,
– setting the output coordinate system or even reprojecting
– Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tools for MongoDB Geospatial
GDAL | Load all sorts of spatial data

24. Work with various GIS software

25. MongoDB Works with QGIS

26. A step forward : MongoGIS
– Mend the way for the GIS community to play with MongoDB
3
 Evolution of spatial database Tech
 Comparison of spatial database solutions
 Roadmap to make the way

27. GIS Application
Geometries
GeometriesGeometries
files
FID
 20th Century late 80s & early 90s
 RDBMS for attribute data
 File systems for geometry data.
 An unique ID of feature link the two
 ESRI Shapefile is one of most famous
 Problems with data integrity, multiuser
access and editing
1st Generation | Hybrid Solution
Standard SQL Geoprocessing
Attributes

28. IT
 20th Century mid 90s
 Attributes & Geometries in database
 But geometry as binary large object
 SDE as a middleware by GIS venders
 Geometries are not understandable.
 Poor integration, no spatial structure
query language
2nd Generation | Spatial Database Engine
SDE
Attributes
Geometries
GeometriesGeometries
blobsSQL
GIS Application

29. GIS
eBusiness
GeometriesAttributes
E-SQL
 20th Century late 90s
 Spatial is a native Data Type
 Attributes & geometries all in
 Rich GIS functions built inside
 Supported by major DB venders
 Spatial data queried using E-SQL
 DB functionality fully supported
E-SQL
GISGIS
eBusiness
eBusiness
3rd Generation | Object-based Spatial Database

30. BIG DATA Spreading
2008.9
Nature
2009.1
Google
2009.5
UN
Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data
Global Plus Project
"Big Data for Development: Opportunities &
Challenges”: A Global Pulse White Paper
2009.12
Microsoft
The Fourth Paradigm:
Data-Intensive Scientific
Discovery
2011.2
Science
Dealing with data
highlight both the challenges posed by the data deluge and the
opportunities that can be realized if we can better organize and
access the data.
2012.3
The White House
Big Data Initiative
more than $200 million to big
data research projects.

31. FeatureSolutions
PostGIS As A Cluster
MongoDB
Cluster
Shared Disk
Failover
File System
Replication
Transaction Log
Shipping
Trigger-Based
Master-Standby
Replication
Statement-Based
Replication
Middleware
Asynchronous
Multi-Master
Replication
Implementation NAS DRBD Streaming Slony-I pgpool-II Bucardo Sharding
Communication Shared Disk Disk Blocks WAL Table Rows SQL Table Rows olog
No Special Hardware × √ √ √ √ √ √
Data Synchronous Sync Sync Sync, Async Async Sync Async Sync
Replication Method × M-S M-S M-S M-M, M-S M-M, M-S M-M
No Master Overhead √ × √ × √ √ √
Failover No Data Loss √ √ With Sync On × √ × √
Failover for HA Fast Fast Fast with Hot Manual Hard to Re-attach × Fast
Writes Scalability × × × × With M-M √ Good
Reads Scalability × × With Hot √ √ √ Good
Parallel Query × × × × With M-M √ √
Complexity For Admin Low Low Low High Very High High Low
Load Balancing × × × × √ × √
MongoDB as a High Performance Database

32. Solutions OGC SFA SQL/MM GeoJSON ArcSDE PostGIS
Oracle
Spatial MongoDB
Spatial Data Types 17 18 6 +++ ++ ++ GeoJSON
Spatial Reference -- -- -- +++ +++ +++ WGS84
Spatial Index -- -- -- R tree Gist, Rtree R tree GeoHash
Geometry I/O √ √ -- +++ +++ ++ ×
Geometry Accessors √ √ -- +++ ++ ++ ×
Geometry Editors -- -- -- +++ ++ + ×
Topological Info -- √ -- +++ ++ +++ ×
Spatial Measurements √ √ -- +++ ++ ++ ×
Geo-processing √ √ -- +++ ++ ++ ×
Spatial Relationships √ √ -- +++ ++ ++ 4
GIS Tech Ecosystems -- -- -- +++ +++ + ×
MongoDB as a spatial database

33.  GDAL driver for mongodb
– The way that mongodb plays with the GIS community
– Work with GDAL community to included in the next release
– Open Source: https://github.com/mongogis/mongodb-gdal-driver
 MongoGIS
– The Next Generation Infrastructure for the GIS community
– MongoGIS group in the github: https://github.com/mongogis
– We may build it together!
MongoGIS in github

34. Appreciate Your Time!
Sponsored by the China Scholarship Council for one year program at UIUC, Illinois, USA.
Supported by the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Nanjing University.
Great Thanks go to Craig Wilson, Greg Steinbruner for their precious advices.