R. Béjar, M.Á. Latre, M. Gould, P.R. Muro-Medrano 91 GIS COTS Integration in a SDI Software Architecture, a Study Case in the Galicia Region SDI Rubén Béjar 1 , M.Á. Latre 1 , Michael Gould 2 , P.R. Muro-Medrano 1 1 Computer Science and Systems Engineering Dep. University of Zaragoza (Spain) {rbejar, latre, prmuro}@unizar.es 2 Department of Information Systems University Jaume I (Spain) gould@lsi.uji.es ABSTRACT Public administrations have been facing problems with geographical information use and management for years. This was the case of the Galicia Department of Environment (CMA), in charge of managing environmental resources in that Spanish NUTS-2 region. On one hand, INSPIRE work in progress toward a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI), currently focused on environmental issues, suggested a solution based on IN- SPIRE recommended standards. On the other hand, the availability of commercial soft- ware licenses in the CMA, Oracle Spatial, ESRI products, SAFE software products, and other software, suggested an approach based as much as possible on commercial off the shelf (COTS) software. The developed system architecture integrates heterogeneous COTS products, but is perceived as a homogeneous and standards-based infrastructure. The main responsible for the perceived homogeneity of this infrastructure are metadata. Metadata catalogs are the core of a SDI, and all available data should have metadata. Many SDI components share these data and metadata: i.e. a map server portrays some data that is already catalogued, and also served by a feature server, but all these compo- nents need to have their own metadata (or capabilities). Being able to make profit of the, already created, metadata in the catalog to facilitate creation and management of the SDI services and components would make its administration easier and would prevent from metadata inconsistencies. This paper presents the solution developed for the CMA, a standards-based infrastruc- ture built upon a COTS architecture and with an emphasis on metadata, which is both useful for solving the CMA current needs and for becoming the core of a future Galician SDI. INTRODUCTION The Infrastructure of Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) is a Euro- pean Commission initiative that concerns the preparation of Community