iDelveConnect is our latest innovation, built on the proven caching technology used by the iDelve web-mapping system. iDelveConnect is a fully-automated WFS caching application that obtains spatial data from remote WFS data sources, and stores it locally for access by GIS applications and business systems. The result is that WFS data sources can now be used in solutions where to this point bandwidth and latency might have been show-stoppers.

iDelveConnect is nearly finished, but before we release it we will give you a little preview of what you will be able to do with it. iDelveConnect will let you replicate a remote WFS layer locally in a completely effortless way, without impacting other applications that use your Internet connection. Any layers that are on a remote WFS server can be brought in as a local layer, which means you can finally take advantage of them in a “normal” way, without constant timeouts and delays. You can include them as part of your data catalogues without having to worry about when you need to get an updated extract, because iDelveConnect takes care of that for you.

You can set up a layer quickly to “just cache”, or you can fine-tune it to be just the way you like it, by choosing extents, attributes, specifying post-processing options, or creating indexes on attributes. Layers can be configured with automated back-ups, which can be saved to permanent snapshots.

The number of WFS services is vastly increasing. You can set up an unlimited number of WFS servers to cache layers from, such as Landgate’s SLIP WFS service, NASA, GeoScience Australia, etc.

With full control over when layers are cached, any impact on the Internet bandwidth available to other applications can be controlled, for example by allowing caching to take place at night or during weekends. You can also control how many layers are cached concurrently, and cap the total bandwidth iDelveConnect is allowed to consume.

Now that iDelveConnect has downloaded the data, let's consider your GIS application. If your application is currently able to connect to a WFS data source, then it is compatible with iDelveConnect. In addition to allowing connections directly to its spatial database cache, iDelveConnect provides a high-speed WFS interface, combining Open Standards Accessibility with local performance.

iDelveConnect will no-doubt form a central part of many organisations’ spatial data management. Once set up, it looks after itself, sending notifications by email of any events that have happened, such as cache completions, or potential issues.