Project Brief
A Project Brief is used to provide a full and firm foundation for the initiation of the project and is created in the Starting up a Project process.
In the Initiating a Project process, the contents of the Project Brief are extended and refined in the Project Initiation Documentation, after which the Project Brief is no longer maintained.
This is to be a simple QGIS plugin for displaying all public LINZ Data Service (LDS) data in a table and allow for one-click importing of selected data. This will improve the coupling of QGIS and the LDS.
The primary driver for undertaking this plugin build is to develop the skills required for supporting LINZ’s Spatial Solutions Lifecycle framework.
The application fits within Data Service’s strategic objective of supporting data reuse by providing tools to enable LINZ spatial data use (see the relevant excerpt from the Data Services Strategy highlighted below). This QGIS plugin proposes to achieve this by making all public LDS layers viewable and ‘one-click ’ importable into the QGIS application. This means closer coupling and simpler loading of data from the LDS into QGIS
As already stated, the main driver of this piece of work is learning and development. Previous LINZ development projects have suffered from a lack of a software life cycle framework. Data Services have recently published such a framework and it is the intent of this project to become proficient with the tools required to support this framework. The development of this skills obviously has the long term payback to the organisation.
The QGIS Plugin will read and display the LDS public web service feeds in a table. One or multiple datasets will be able to be selected from the table and imported into QGIS. This will specifically require:
- The plugin’s minimum QGIS version is to be 2.18. This is in line with LINZ’s mid-term release plan based on this QT 4 and python 2.7.6 will be used
- API Key management: The ability for a user to input their API key once and the QGIS plugin persist the key. Methods for updating the key are also required.
- Help documentation to be provided and easily accessed (e.g html doc)
LINZ’s Spatial Solutions Lifecycle framework and DevOps best practices will be an integral part of the project. This specifically includes:
- A detailed design document will be developed prior to the build commencing
- a Focus on test automation
- Continuous Integration (CI) - All plugin code commits will trigger CI to build and test the plugin
- Focus on initially delivering a Minimum Viable Product
- Plugin to allow for increased simplicity importing LDS data into QGIS.
- Gain knowledge of building and testing QGIS Plugins in CI environment
- Develop testing skills
- A base to allow further development and coupling of QGIS / LDS
The Project has been allocated half a day a week as a learning opportunity that will also produce outcomes useful to Data Service’s business strategy. As this will only see 0.1 FTE it is expected the delivery of a minimum viable product will take to 6-8 months.