The typical usage scenario consists of a couple of steps assigned to main business actors: map administrator; map expert and map user.

Map administrator is responsible for system maintenance: initial configuration, data bootstrapping and management are key responsibilities. At the beginning administrator imports initial catalog (feature types necessary for basic maps). Different data sources of initial feature types must be supported. First of all ESRI shape files; MapInfo interchange format; AutoCAD exchange format; many raster, geo-referenced formats.

Map administrator is responsible for system maintenance: initial configuration, data bootstrapping and management are key responsibilities. At the beginning administrator imports initial catalog (feature types necessary for basic maps). Different data sources of initial feature types must be supported. First of all ESRI shape files; MapInfo interchange format; AutoCAD exchange format; many raster, geo-referenced formats.

Map experts, according to assigned roles, may update initial feature types. Editing of alpha-numerical and spatial properties allowed in the scenario. Map users in the same time have ability to preview the feature types (the functionality might be limited by Map administrators).

Having the ready to use feature types, Map administrators may register some map layers definitions. The task adds new aspects to data (feature types): representation semantic (styled layer descriptions, SLD format based); data context and corresponding restrictions (available scales or zooms; area of interest; some keywords).

After that Map experts may improve the layers (or approve).

And final step is map definitions. That’s how our map layers become thematic maps.