Database Management, GIS and Visualization

The extensive use of spatial data as the common element within and between models, and the need for spatial computations and visualization, make clear that the Opus platform requires access to these functions. Some of these are handled internally by efficient array processing and image processing capabilities of the Python Numeric library. But database management and GIS functionality will be accessed by coupling with existing Open Source database servers such as MySQL (www.mysql.org) and Postgres (www.postgresql.org), and GIS libraries such as QuantumGIS (www.qgis.org). Interfaces to some commercial DBMS are available through the SQLAlchemy library. An interface to the ESRI ArcGIS system has been implemented and is being refined.