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The WFS will be implemented using Geoserver. The layers for the component, such as census tracts and business locations, will be defined as feature services under Geoserver.
Client-Side
The capability of handling both geospatial features and map images will be provided by OpenLayers, an open source Javascript library with the ability to combine multiple map services into one map rendering component. OpenLayers supports many popular services including Google Maps, MS Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, OGC WFS, OGC Web Map Service (WMS), ArcIMS, and MapServer.
Spatial Database
The map component will use the PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS spatial database extension, which provides support for geographic objects, spatial indices, and many common spatial operations that will improve the performance and scalability of the map component and provide advanced query capabilities. PostGIS is free and open source and follows OGC-standard geometry types such as well-known-text (WKT) and well-known-binary (WKB) and OGC-standard spatial operations such as intersect, union, overlap, etc. This will make importing and manipulating data easier. In addition, the PostGIS spatial database is a widely used open source project that is compatible with numerous GIS applications and libraries (e.g. GeoTools, MapServer, Grass, etc).