3D service publishing flow

SuperMap iServer can publish these datasources: SuperMap workspace and remote WMS 1.1.1 datasource and remote WFS 1.0.0 datasource. SuperMap 3D services can publish many types of data. Users' data are usually organized in SuperMap workspaces, i.e., the data are loaded in the 3D scene in the same workspace and then published.

A SuperMap workspace is a working environment for users to store all the datasources of a project (one transaction process) and the organizations of and relationships between maps. SuperMap iServer recommends that users use Oracle Plus datasource, SQL Server Plus datasource, or the UDB datasource to store data (existing SDB datasource can be converted to UDB data or a database datasource in SuperMap iDesktop.

SuperMap iServer provides a complete service publishing scheme with 2D and 3D services integrated. The publishing processes of a 3D service are the same as those of a 2D service. Once the workspace containing the 3D scenes is ready, a user can quickly publish the service via "Quickly publish service(s)".

In many cases, however, users have data coming from various sources with different types. In this case, the data need to be converted and processed to generate corresponding 3D cache data before the data are loaded in a 3D scene. The overall flow of publishing a SuperMap 3D service is:

1. Preparing the data

As described in Data in 3D scene, data types that SuperMap 3D services can publish include vector data, maps, images, terrain data, models, and KML data. Some of them are original 2D data, and some are 3D cache data. However, a user's original data come from various sources and they may not be the SuperMap data formats. So SuperMap iDesktop provides the data conversion module to solve this problem. Now the data conversion module supports importing 20 commonly-used data formats, which is located on the drop-down menu of the "Importing data" drop-down button. The corresponding file extensions that can be imported are shown in the figure below.

2. Converting the data

It is recommended that the data published in SuperMap 3D services are saved as the file datasource format of SuperMap, i.e., the *.udb format. The UDB datasource is a file datasource that is cross-platform and supports efficient storage and retrival of massive data. The maximum data volume a UDB datasource can store is 128TB. Users can create new datasources of the UDB type as needed, and then import datasets into them. The dataset types that can be imported are listed in the figure on the right.

Additionally, image data format SIT, 3D model cache data format scv, map cache data sci, and KML/KMZ data are also commonly-used data formats. They can also be directly loaded in a 3D scene without being converted to the UDB format.

3. Generating the cached data

When publishing a SuperMap 3D service, the user can preprocess the data and create a hierarchical cache before loading them in order to improve the performance of the 3D data application. SuperMap 3D provides a mature caching mechanism which can be used to preprocess vector, image, terrain, or model data and create a hierarchical cache. The recommended caches are: 3D vector\model cache (*.scv), 2/3D image/raster map cache(*.sci, *.sci3d), and 3D terrain cache (*.sct).

Before loading data, the user can click on the dataset for which cache is to be generated in SuperMap iDesktop, and the right click to select generating 3D cache. For map set data, 2D and 3D map caches can be generated for the whole set. About the caching mechanism that a SuperMap 3D service uses to improve its performance, it is described in details in Optimizing the performance of a 3D service about when to generate pre-cache and what kind of data do not need caching or may employ dynamic caching.

4. Loading the 3D scene data

A 3D scene is the medium for displaying 3D data. All the 2D and 3D data published in SuperMap 3D services must be first loaded in a 3D scene and then published. In SuperMap iDesktop, it is simple to load data into a 3D scene: After a new 3D scene is created, click on the dataset to be loaded; then right click on it and select "Add to the current scene"; or select "Add cache..." among the scene operations. Additionally, a scene cache can be directly generated for the scene with data loaded. Once the 3D scene is saved and named, the 3D scene containing the data to be published is successfully created.

5. Publishing the workspace

After the data are ready and added to a 3D scene, save the workspace and set its path and name. It can be published as 3D service directly, or can be quickly published by SuperMap iServer.