Data Integration Issues for a Farm Decision Support System

This paper explores data integration and compatibility issues raised during the development of a prototype spatial decision support system (SDSS) as a support tool for the farm manager of the University of Central Lancashire's farm at Newton Rigg and as a teaching resource for staff and students on campus. Metadata concerns and interoperability problems are addressed in detail. The paper outlines the proposed model for the SDSS and issues identified during the investigation of the users’ requirements and the analysis of the underlying spatial data sets. The initial data issues relate to the identification of existing and missing data sets ( Parker et al. 1996 ) and the creation of metadata describing the data sets. The second area to be explored concerns interoperability issues. This is relevant when users must access more than one dataset using distributed computing resources ( Sondheim et al. 1999 ).