The end of Google Summer of Code is a new beginning of the SOS Administrator. This year, the SOS Administrator project aimed to improve the user experience with 52°North Sensor Observation Service (SOS) and make its administration more intuitive. We tried to achieve that goal by making 52°North SOS installations just a matter of few clicks. First stepping stones were also laid out to facilitate SOS administrators by getting together useful features within a adminstrative backend.

The web-based SOS Installer is a really handy tool for inexperienced users who want to try the 52°North SOS, but also an equally useful tool for experienced users who appreciate a simpler and quicker installation procedure. You deploy the standard SOS web archive and visit the installer page. The wizard then asks for the very least required information, such as required database settings, password, etc. and even creates a new database if it doesn’t exist. If you want to initially configure global properties, you can optionally do that at the time of installation as well. Most importantly, if you get stuck while installing the SOS, the installer will guide you through the complete installation process using appropriate error messages.

The SOS Administrative Backend serves as a one stop place for common administrator tasks, such as changing global service settings, taking a quick look at capability documents and playing around with the database without starting specific software. In addition to that, we added useful links, for example the SOS Tutorial (for beginners) or a direct link to file a bug. The adminstrative backend is not yet a full fledged backend – but it’s a start.

Google Summer of Code is over – what now?

The SOS Installer was implemented completely, but not using Spring and Spring MVC paradigms. The SOS Administrative Backend, however, does use Spring as the logic layer and Spring MVC for the presentation layer. One possible step could be to port the installer to use these frameworks as well.

Furthermore, the Administrative Backend can be extended a lot – more modules at the dashboard screen, a better database settings UI, and improved authentication, to name a few tasks.

I want to try this project online, where can I access it?

You can try SOS Administrator on our demo server here. If you are interested in the how the complete project took shape, click here, or if you just want to have a look at few screenshots, please find them below.

Installer

 

Administrator

As mentioned above, the SOS Administrator uses Spring for business logic and Spring Web MVC for the presentation components – more information about the respective frameworks is available here.