In a recent Tridion delivery, Amaze was engaged to integrate managed content with a Geographical Information System (GIS) implementation. The GIS system was hosted within a completely separate business and technical domain managed by the client and it was essential that the GIS team were to be allowed to use their tools with a minimum of integration effort with the CMS.
The specification of the system called for the mapping element to surface content via a search interface with free text, radius and point of interest type options. The search results then calls a further page with a rendered map with search results plotted on the map. Each plotted point is a record in the Tridion CMS and a synopsis of the records displayed on the page. Further functionality allowed the map to be moved (in a similar fashion to Google Maps) and further points outside of the original search radius now visible, to be plotted.
With any integration a loosely or tightly integrated model needs to be considered. In either case there may be technical, business or non-technical requirements that will influence the decision. It may be possible in some cases to argue from either a technical or non-technical perspective that a business requirement can be reconsidered or revalidated.
When planning a solution for this integration it was decided that a loosely coupled solution would be the most practical as it was most consistent with the business case.
Full requirements capture was carried out and analysed and the following technical solution was designed.
The literal key to the solution was the maintenance of a reference known to both systems. The key is generated by the GIS team which does not affect the business requirements although it does introduce a slight overhead on the part of content entry as the key must be sought from the GIS team via a business workflow case before the content can be ‘live’. The reference is stored in Tridion using a Metadata schema assigned to each Component.
The wireframe outlines the functionality of the solution.
- The Mapping Element (1) is rendered via the GIS system.
- Managed content for the selected point of interest (either via search or interaction with the map) at (2).
- Other elements rendered as selectable points of interest are rendered as a list of links at (3).
- Other points of interest based on proximity or search class are rendered as (4).
Mapping content and managed content is retrieved by the client browser using a combination of REST and Web services enabling the GIS component to be managed on a separate network.
This solution and it framework proved adequately flexible to allow it to be used in another GIS application with very little modification and this modification to be primarily to the cosmetic presentation and configuration.
