A

Project Report on
WEB ENABLED DYNAMIC AGRICULTURAL
MARKET INFORMATION

November 22, 2006

Project submitted by:

Ajay S Ani
Prabu J
Praveen Kumar V
K P Ranjith

Project Guide:
Mr. T Radhakrishnan
CTO, IIITM-K

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Managment - Kerala

(IIITM-K)

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Acknowledgement

First of all we thank our project guide Mr. T Radhakrishnan, CTO,

IIITM-K for guiding us throughout this project. Also we would like to con-
vey our special thanks to Dr. Venkatesh Choppella, Associate Professor,
IIITM-K, Mr. Praveen Kumar G, Associate instructor, Mr. David Math-
ews, Associate instructor, and other instructors of Web Technology course for
their constant support and motivation throughout the course of the project.

We thank all our friends and all others who had significantly contributed
for our project. Without proper guidance from them it would have been im-
possible to complete this project. Above all we thank God Almighty for
blessing us to work with these resourceful people and for the learning expe-
rience we gained.

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Abstract

Agriculture market 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-analyzed historical market information enables farmers to

make planting decisions, including 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, policy makers and administrators to make
well-informed decisions about interventions necessary to promote food
security.

Web Enabled Dynamic Agricultural Market Information

is an interactive system intended for farmers, academicians, agricul-
tural scientists , policy makers etc,which will equip them in taking
better decisions about choosing the market to sell the farm produce,
determining the route logistics and future plantations.

The system is designed such that all the information stated above
can be accessed through a single interface. To address this purpose,
the power of GIS is combined with the advantages of database and
the system is implemented with open source technologies.

At present we have many systems that displays market informa-

tion, but these systems give the market information in tabular form.
The web enabled dynamic agricultural market information system dis-
plays the result on a map. At IIITM-K project wing a similar system
is being designed on similar lines using proprietary software.

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Contents

1 Introduction 6

2 Review of Related work 7

3 Problem Analysis 7

4 Design and Implementation 8

4.1 MapServer - Vesion 2.2.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4.2 PostgreSQL - Version 8.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4.3 Apache Tomcat - Version 5.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

5 Architecture 11

6 Use case Diagram 12

7 Deployment Diagram 14

8 Result and Evaluation 16

9 Future Enhancment 17

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IIITM-K November 22, 2006

10 Conclusion 17

11 Screen Shots 18

List of Figures

1 System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2 Usecase diagram for Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Usecase diagram for User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4 Deployment Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5 Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

6 Accessing Market Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

7 Updating Market Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

8 New User registeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

9 MapServer Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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1 Introduction

Internet based geographical data services involve management of spatial

and non-spatial (attribute) data. Geographic Information System (GIS) has
become an indispensable tool for analyzing and managing spatial data.

The development of a web-based system by integrating GIS and Database

would serve two crucial purposes. The user can operate the system without
having to grapple with the underlying intricacies of GIS and Database tech-
nology. Secondly it allows the sharing of information and technical expertise
among a wide range of users.

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 performing special
purpose analysis.

The purpose of the web enabled dynamic agricultural market infor-

mation system is 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 analyzing the agricultural market information through
smart maps.

The system aids in empowering farmers, extension officers, common

people etc by providing them quick access to prices and quantity of goods
available in different markets. This helps them in generating maximum profit
for their produce. It also helps them in planning for the future season.

Most of the GIS based applications run on the client side and the soft-
ware is very costly. This system that we developed is based on open source

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software MapServer and runs on a browser. Another advantage is the dy-

namic nature of the results generated. The information so generated serves
the purpose and need of a whole class of people ranging from farmers to
policy makers.

2 Review of Related work

No identical GIS based system could be located anywhere. Market

information is provided in tabular form in many existing systems including
the VUAT portal of IIITM-K. The project wing of IIITM-K is developing a
GIS based system, which works on proprietary software such as ArcIMS and
Oracle. The VUAT portal can be accessed at
http://www.vuatkerala.org/

3 Problem Analysis

The intended system has to reach a large set of population, but the
commercially available GIS software has a huge cost factor associated with it.
Therefore the ideal solution will be to develop the system using open source
system, which can be easily implemented in a distributed spatial database
environment at a low overall cost. Also the program will run on the server
side so that the client can access it using a browser.

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4 Design and Implementation

In this system the salient features of spatial database is developed by

integrating the Open Source Software (OSS) MapServer and PostgreSQL
Object-Relational database into a web based client/server environment. This
feature makes the system accessible from anywhere on the planet with only
a browser running in the client side.

4.1 MapServer - Vesion 2.2.1

MapServer is an Open Source development environment for building

spatially enabled Internet applications. MapServer is not a full-featured GIS
system. MapServer excels at rendering spatial data (maps, images, and vec-
tor data) for the web. Beyond browsing GIS data, MapServer allows you
create ”geographic image maps”, that is, maps that can direct users to con-
tent.

MapServer was originally developed by the University of Minnesota

(UMN) ForNet project in cooperation with NASA and the Minnesota De-
partment of Natural Resources (MNDNR). Presently, the MapServer project
is hosted by the TerraSIP project, a NASA sponsored project between the
UMN and consortium of land management interests.

The system that we are developing has to be of low cost and has to
be web enabled. Mapserver meets these two attributes and hence this was a
design decision to use Mapserver over other internet MapServer.

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4.2 PostgreSQL - Version 8.1

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database system that has the fea-

tures of traditional commercial database systems with enhancements to be
found in next-generation DBMS systems. PostgreSQL is free and the com-
plete source code is available. Its a highly scalable, SQL compliant, open
source object-relational database management system.

Since the application that we develop is a GIS enabled application we

will have spatial data and in order to store and retrieve spatial data we need
to have a spatially extendable database.

PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-

relational database. In effect, PostGIS ”spatially enables” the PostgreSQL
server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic
information systems (GIS), much like ESRI’s SDE or Oracle’s Spatial exten-
sion. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS ”Simple Features Specification for SQL”
and has been certified as compliant with the ”Types and Functions” profile.

4.3 Apache Tomcat - Version 5.5

Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Refer-
ence Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies.
The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun
under the Java Community Process. Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-
scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries
and organizations.

Market information such as name of the market, place of the market,

name of the commodity and price of the commodity are stored in the Post-
greSQL these data are stored, retrieved and updated using Java Servlets and

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JSP. This forms our business Logic. The results will be queried and displayed
on a map.

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5 Architecture

Figure 1: System Architecture

The browser communicates with the http server via http request and
response objects . The http server handles static data which includes display-
ing map and static html pages. If there is a request for a dynamic content
then the request will be forwarded to the Servlet container which handles the
dynamic information . A servlet container comprises essentially the compo-
nent of a web server that hosts and interacts with Java servlets. Servlets are
not allowed to access the database directly. The Servlets transfers the control
to the java bean, which acts as the abstraction of the database. The com-
munication with the database takes place through the bean. The database
that we use here is PostgreSQL.

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6 Use case Diagram

Figure 2: Usecase diagram for Administrator

There are two types of users in the system, one is the ordinary user and
the other is the administrator approved by the central agency.

The above use case diagram shows an Administrator logging in to the

system. The user will have to enter the username and password in order to
login, which is provided by the central agency. The administrator has the
privilege to populate and update the database and the map.

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Figure 3: Usecase diagram for User

The above use case diagram describes the activities of the user. The
user doesn’t have permission to update the database but will be able to view
all the market information and the corresponding map.

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7 Deployment Diagram

Figure 4: Deployment Diagram

Viewer client is actually a series of HTML pages running inside a Web

browser that can interact directly with a map server via the HTTP profile
of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Interface. WMS
client manages the interactions with OGC web mapping interfaces via HTTP,
and dynamically generates HTML that can run in the Web Browser. WMS
server is a map server that provides three OGC Web Mapping Interfaces.
WMS server accepts requests from WMS client and viewer client in the form
of HTTP URL strings, and returns results encoded as XML, GIF, GML, and
so on. The database stores geo-feature data that can be accessed and utilized
by the WMS server to generate GML documents or draw maps.

The user interacts locally with Viewer Client and submits HTTP
GET/POST requests to the WMS client. The web server in the WMS client
accepts user requests and parses them before forwarding them to the ap-

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plication server. The application server then processes these requests in an

application, and returns dynamically generated HTML pages to the web
browser.

GetMap request is embedded in the PHTML pages to fetch an image

map from the map server and display it directly in the web browser.

The vector datasets to be stored in the PostGIS can be converted from

shapefiles. Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) publishes the
shape file format for simple vector data with attributes. An ESRI shapefile
consists of three files with the same basename:

• .shp - the main file holding the actual vertices that describe shapes

• .shx - the index file holding index data pointing to the structures in
the main file

• .dbf - the dBase table holding the feature attributes

PostGIS provides a tool called ”shp2pgsql” to create a SQL file from

a shapefile. The SQL file holds SQL commands such as ”create table” and
”insert data”, which can be executed directly by PostGIS. One shapefile
corresponds to one PostGIS table, containing the points, lines, or polygons
to display as map layers.

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8 Result and Evaluation

There are two types of users in the system . The first class of users are
the administrators who are authorized to update or modify current market
information . These set of users should get authorization from the central
agency, who owns and manages the system. The central agency decides the
administrators. The next group of users are the general users who are the
real beneficiaries of the system . They are entitled to view the market prices
without a user account.

Since the information is displayed on a geographical context the users

will be in a position to get the current market price as well as retrieving
information regarding other factors such as the location of the market, dis-
tance between markets, route logistics, whether the market is accessible in
all seasons etc.

The central agency decides and appoints administrators for each mar-
ket. The administrator applies for the administrative account by sending the
new user registration form. The central agency then approves the account of
the administrator by providing an administrative account. The administra-
tor logs in to the system using the userid and password. The administrator
populates the database.

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9 Future Enhancment

1. Implementing route logistics

2. Finding shortest route between any two markets using Dijkstras algo-
rithm

3. Implementing market index by displaying high market price and low

market price of a particular product

10 Conclusion

This system could cater to the needs of a large section of people ranging
from farmers, traders, agricultural scientists, academicians and policy mak-
ers. All this was implemented using open source technologies and therefore
has only a small cost factor associated with it . This system is designed based
on the client server model and being web enabled GIS, this system can be
accessed and updated from anywhere in the planet. The power of GIS en-
ables the system to display the results in a geographical context, which helps
the users to take better decisions about the market produce as well as route
logistics. These factors enable the system to be used by any administration
or organization dealing with market information.

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11 Screen Shots

Figure 5: Home Page

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Figure 6: Accessing Market Information

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Figure 7: Updating Market Information

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Figure 8: New User registeration

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Figure 9: MapServer Interface

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References

http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/phpmapscript-byexample
http://postgis.refractions.net/docs/postgis.pdf
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0477/p0477.htm
http://www.dambd.org/agri-business.htm
http://www.vuatkerala.org/
http://tortoisesvn.net
http://iiitmk.ac.in/newsletter.html

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