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Working Group Meeting

July 17, 2007

Attending:Matt AustinAl Sutherland
Dave NicolsonPaul Ramsey
Kevin NeufeldEmily Gouge
Sue Fox

Discussion

* Paul gave an overview of how we put the analysis questions together and what the plans are for the requirements document. Refractions will create a document containing:

  • the pertinent analysis questions; will be made as generic as possible
  • a breakdown of the type of questions that the system will be able to answer
  • user stories
    • Will be a definitive list; generic with respect to data but specific with respect to form
  • non-functional requirements (described below)

* Refractions will also provide a user interface design document

* Discussed what Refractions would address for non-functional requirements

  • Usability
  • Performance
  • Security
  • Legal
  • Interoperability
  • Scalability

* Usability

  • Who is the target audience? General public? GIS Analyst?
    • Matt feels the target audience is professionals who provide advice to decision-makers, but are not GIS Analysts.
    • Paul pointed out that the spike of knowledge for these users is different between each user, because of the different domain expertise.
    • Agreement that the goal is to unload work from GIS Analysts, so general public would be the target user.
  • There are a number of different perspectives -- data, interface, and type of questions asked.
  • Focus is on data
    • How many variables will be provided?
    • Too many will scare off users
    • Matt suggested we could provide a lot of variables, but present the 'top 10' so users aren't overwhelmed
  • Goal of the first delivery is to provide something compelling, not overwhelming
  • Al mentioned that LandData BC was a system where about 12 queries were provided to users that they could refine slightly, and results were presented right away. Any other questions outside of the 12 queries were batched.
    • Al will provide Refractions with documentation on this system.

* Performance

  • General consensus that the system needs to provide some aspect of real-time performance to give users the ability to see results right away and refine their queries as necessary.
  • For Phase 2, one column was used for each data set
    • Becomes cumbersome to add more data sets (takes longer each time)
  • Overall design philosophy is the incremental cost of adding a new data set should be the same
  • Emily reported on her database engine research
    • Lucid has offered better performance than Postgres, but there are a few stability issues
    • Next step is to investigate SQL Server OLAP tools -- is a licensing cost associated with this solution
  • Investigation will be ongoing as we proceed with user interface design
  • A possible solution would be to build our own engine
    • downside is net new code
    • upside is better performance
  • Matt asked about the option of only delivering a limited number of data sets
    • Would only end up being 40 to 50, which may not be useful

* Security

  • No security requirements
  • By design, we are dealing with data that is public

* Legal

  • Should provide some sort of disclaimer
  • Source acknowledgment for data
    • Providing this in metadata is sufficient

* Interoperability

  • Map service interface per CGDI
  • Seamless integration with provincial government standard applications
  • Format requirements
    • ARC Grid
    • GRASS Grid
    • R Grid (?)

* Scalability

  • How many people can use system?
  • How much data can it hold?
  • Can meet performance requirements when there are 2 or fewer simultaneous users

* Matt asked about when the documents would be delivered

  • Refractions has internal meeting on Jul 18, will discuss and let Matt know

* Requirements for data format will be given to data providers at a later date

* Anticipating that data layer information should be complete by the Fall

* Working group will meet every two weeks from now on, Refractions will meet with just Matt on the alternate weeks

* Next week's meeting will be on Monday Jul 23 at 10 (instead of Tuesday)

Action Items

* Al Sutherland to provide Refractions with LandData BC documentation. * Refractions to update and circulate schedule.