FAQ

What is ARLAS Exploration?

ARLAS Exploration is a software solution for searching, analyzing and visualizing very large amount of geo-spatial data.

It aims at providing clear and instantaneous insights on your Geo Spatial BigData with a an elegant and pleasant carto-centric web interface. Filters, analytics and geo-analytics are extensively used for providing a blazing fast view on your BigData with an engaging and inspiring user experience.

Importantly, ARLAS Exploration offers a propagation mechanism for tagging your data. Those tags can then be used for some later analytics, thus allowing the elaboration of datasets with sophisticated logics.

Who should use ARLAS Exploration?

Anyone wanting a crystal clear and exhaustive understanding of their geo-spatial data, especially if those are numerous.

  • geo-tracked objects (trucks, vessels, packages) or trafic data
  • network (telecom, energy or public transportation)
  • Earth Observation data
  • anything else having a timestamp and a latitude/longitude or a x/y

What do I need to do for having ARLAS Exploration operational?

You will need to: - have an elasticsearch cluster up and running - index your geo-referenced data within the elasticsearch cluster. - run and configure ARLAS Server - run and configure ARLAS Web User Interface

In case you want to enable the tagging mechanism, you will need to also: - have an kafka cluster running - run ARLAS Tagger

The software solution has been designed in order to be simple to deploy and operate so that any developper can set it up. The documentation is exhaustive and uptodate.

However, you might not be a software engineer, running an elasticsearch cluster and a kafka cluster can be tricky and configuring optimally ARLAS Exploration need some time and knowledge for providing the finest user experience. Gisaïa, the team behind ARLAS Exploration, can do all of it for you, so that you just need to focus on exploring and discovering your geo-referenced data.

Do I need to modify my data or move to an other database?

No, your existing database can remain unchanged. You simply need to index your database in the free and opensource search engine elasticsearch. logstash can help you with this.

Note

When indexing your database, you will have to build NoSQL documents out of your relational table in order to index them.

Is ARLAS Exploration able to handle several data sources?

Yes, you can index your different data sources in one or multiple Elasticsearch indices. ARLAS Exploration handles multiple indices that are within the same alias or have the same name pattern.

Is ARLAS Exploration able to provide only a sub-set of data for certain categories of users?

We provide a way to implement an ACL by using filters in the header of the requests : You need to intercept the requests and add the ACL filter applicable for the user to their headers and forward them to ARLAS Server.

In other words, you have to implement the authentication and role mapping and from the role inject the suitable ACL filter in the request header. ARLAS applies an AND operator between the ACL filter and your ARLAS Server request filter.

Does ARLAS Exploration ensure security and data access?

ARLAS Exploration will provide soon (end of 2019) a rule base access control that relies on JWT token and OAUTH2. The current version of ARLAS provides a simple mechanism for filtering by roles.

How much does it cost to get ARLAS Exploration?

The software solution is free and the source code is licensed under Apache V2.0.

How much does it cost to setup ARLAS Exploration?

0€ or 0$ if you are a software engineer and have time to read the doc.

How much does it cost to run ARLAS Exploration?

In order to evaluate the cost of running ARLAS Exploration in a production context with high availability constraints, you will have to take into account:

  • the price of running an elasticsearch cluster, on premise or in the cloud (See https://cloud.elastic.co/pricing)
  • the price of indexing your historical and fresh data
  • the price of running the ARLAS Exploration stack (from one to 3 virtual machines)

Can I build an application with ARLAS Exploration?

Yes, it is meant for that! ARLAS Exploration has a highly modular architecture so that you can take what you need, leave what you don't want and extend it with what is missing.

You can use ARLAS Server for serving your geo-referenced data. ARLAS Server offers a REST API and OGC services (WFS and CSW).

Also, the ARLAS WUI Toolkit makes it easy to setup a customized Web Application based on ARLAS WUI but with all your domain specific functions and your own look & feel.

Is it difficult to run ARLAS Exploration?

Not at all, especially if you have an elasticsearch cluster running. It takes a minute to start ARLAS Exploration with docker. No need to install anything else. Check out the Get Started page.

Is it difficult to configure ARLAS Exploration?

It can be. Configuring efficient analytics and an optimal map visualization takes time and requires some knowledges in webmapping.