A

Project proposal on
WEB ENABLED DYNAMIC AGRICULTURAL
MARKET INFORMATION

September 23, 2006

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Managment - Kerala

(IIITM-K)

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Contents
1 Executive Summary 4
1.1 Title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Implementers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 Project Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.2 Project Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Project Deliverables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Problem specification 5

3 Solution Outline 5

4 Project Deliverables 6
4.1 Integration of different data sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2 Information availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3 All in one platform framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4 Efficient and cost-effective service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.5 Deliverable System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

5 Description of Technologies 8
5.1 ArcIMS : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2 PostgreSQL : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.3 PostGIS : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.4 Tomcat 4.1.31 : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.5 Tortoise SVN: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.6 JSP / Servlets: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.7 HTML: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

6 Project Time Estimation 9

6.1 Work Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2 Activities Time (in person hour per day) . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

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7 References 10

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1 Executive Summary

1.1 Title
Web Enabled Dynamic Agriculture Market Information

1.2 Objective
To develop a system that brings in the power of GIS and database on
to a web browser that helps farmers, traders, administrators, academicians
etc for analysing the agricultural market information through smart maps.

1.3 Implementers

1.3.1 Project Members

1. Ajay S Ani ajay-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in

2. Prabu J prabu-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in
3. Praveen Kumar V praveen-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in
4. K P Ranjith ranjith-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in

1.3.2 Project Guide

Mr. T Radhakrishnan
Chief Technology Officer, IIITM-K

1.4 Project Deliverables

Agriculture marketing information can play an important role both in
improving food marketing system and in promoting food security. Up-to-
date market information can enable farmers to negotiate with traders from
a position of greater strength and can also facilitate the spatial distribution
of products from rural areas to towns and between markets. Well analysed
historical market information enables farmers to make planting decisions, in-
cluding those related to new crops. It also permits traders to make better
decisions regarding the viability of intra and perhaps inter-seasonal storage.
Accurate market information can assist agricultural planners and can enable

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policy makers and administrators to make well-informed decisions about in-
terventions necessary to promote food security.
This project demonstrates the utility of Internet-based ArcIMS tools
as an interface to the relational database and shows that this interface ef-
fectively supports the daily operation of the agricultural market information
of a particular geographical location. The methodology of using Internet-
based ArcIMS tools for RDBMS access is effective, efficient and meets users’
demands.

2 Problem specification
It is very difficult for normal people to use commercial GIS software
because it requires a lot of technical expertise and technical training.
Most commercially available off-the shelf GIS software are expensive
and provide too much functionalities for data technicians and application
developers to use in generating and maintaining spatial data, as well as per-
forming special purpose analyses.

3 Solution Outline
The objective of the GIS Internet database access application is to
create a common application to access database and mapping using a sin-
gle platform, and to dramatically improve access to the data in a relational
database management system (RDBMS) through the use of an ArcIMS in-
terface.
The major functionalities include:

1. To visualize the database data. The technology is used to unlock the

location component of database data and make them available for use
in agriculture market information for daily operations.
2. The database already contains geographic components of these sta-
tions, the longitude and latitude. This application creates shape files
programmatically from the database data, longitude and latitude, col-
laborated and projected. These are then served to the web to display
as main map layers. These data layers are updated daily based on
database updates.
3. To put the data in the database in a geographic context.
4. To enable interactive selection and query of the database from the map
environment and to combine spatial selection with relational database

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 query. This application enables users to query the database by selecting
the stations on maps on any combination of geographic extent, data
content, or predefined SQL queries

Through the proposed System we will be able to bring the power of

GIS and databases to a web interface in a user-friendly system. End users
be it farmers, traders, administrators, policy makers can access agricultural
market information from their browsers without purchasing proprietary GIS
software. This system will reach out to a wider audience.
It precisely establishes various operations, such as fetching the price
of agricultural produce from neighboring markets, finding the shortest path
between two markets etc.

4 Project Deliverables
A picture worth thousands words!!! What we would be projecting here is
something called as ’smart maps’.

This project demonstrates the utility of Internet-based ArcIMS tools

as an interface to the relational database and shows that this interface ef-
fectively supports the daily operation of the agricultural market information
of a particular geographical location. The methodology of using Internet-
based ArcIMS tools for RDBMS access is effective, efficient and meets users’
demands in four areas:

4.1 Integration of different data sources

The key feature of this application is the integration of data from two
different sources, GIS coverage and database data, into a single application.
It not only links the database records with the GIS data, but also allows
users to visualize the database data and put it into a geographic context. It
gets accurate data and services to the professionals who need it for analyzing
data.

4.2 Information availability

The Internet delivers the application online and makes it available to
more users. Utilising the Internet for map viewing and data access and dis-
tribution will significantly streamline our operations. This serves the daily
operational needs of the location and also makes it possible for any commu-
nities and constituents to access and use this information via the Internet.

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4.3 All in one platform framework
It encourages the development, and monitoring of accurate database
data, as well as enabling data sharing with other divisions. It demonstrates
support for the enterprise data warehouse, as well as collaborative inter-
division initiatives.

4.4 Efficient and cost-effective service

Providing database applications over the Internet using ArcIMS allows
the end users to access this data with a standard web browser. Because the
data is centrally located, it is easily maintained and managed. Installing and
updating users software applications are eliminated, providing for a more
cost-effective computing environment.

4.5 Deliverable System

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5 Description of Technologies

5.1 ArcIMS :
ArcIMS (standing for ArcInternet Map Server) is the latest internet
map server from ESRI ( Environmental Systems Research Institute ) . It is
a GIS that is designed to serve maps across the Internet. Sometimes these
maps are just static images allowing simple panning and zooming, whilst
others are more complex pages.

5.2 PostgreSQL :
PostgreSQL is a free object-relational database server (database man-
agement system), released under the flexible BSD-style license. It offers an
alternative to other open-source database systems (such as MySQL and Fire-
bird), as well as to proprietary systems such as Oracle, Sybase, IBM’s DB2
and Microsoft SQL Server.

5.3 PostGIS :
PostGIS is a geographic information system software program that
adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational
database.

5.4 Tomcat 4.1.31 :

Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Refer-
ence Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies.

5.5 Tortoise SVN:

TortoiseSVN is a free open-source client for the Subversion version con-
trol system. TortoiseSVN is an easy to use Revision control / version control
/ source control software for Windows. It is implemented as a Windows shell
extension, which makes it integrate seemlessly into the Windows explorer.

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5.6 JSP / Servlets:
Java Server Page (JSP) is a technology for controlling the content or
appearance of Web pages through the use of servlet s, small programs that
are specified in the Web page and run on the Web server to modify the Web
page before it is sent to the user who requested it. Sun Microsystems, the
developer of Java, also refers to the JSP technology as the Servlet application
program interface (API).

A Servlet is a Java(tm) language program set up to interact along with

a specially designed webserver to provide an interactive web page.

5.7 HTML:
Hyper Text Mark-Up Language (HTML), a subset of Standard Gen-
eralized Mark-Up Language (SGML) for electronic publishing, the specific
standard used for the World Wide Web.

6 Project Time Estimation

6.1 Work Estimate

Each of the project members will devote two hours daily in weekdays
and four hours in weekends.
Weekdays: Time devoted = 4(members) ×2 Hrs = 8 Hrs
Weekends: Time devoted = 4(members) ×4 Hrs = 16 Hrs
8 × 5(days in week) ×8(weeks in two months) +
16 × 2(days in week) ×8(weeks in two months) = 576 Hrs
Number of person hour per day = 576 ÷ 24 = 24 days

6.2 Activities Time (in person hour per day)

Requirement Analysis 4
System design 4
Implementation 7
Testing 2
Documentation 2
Deployment 2
.................................
Total 24

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7 References
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0477/p0477.htm
http://tortoisesvn.net
http://iiitmk.ac.in/newsletter.html
http://www.dambd.org/agri-business.htm

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