[OGC News] OGC News - October 2006

Fri Oct 13 16:47:37 EDT 2006

OGC® News October 2006

CONTENTS

- CTO's Message
- News From The Tyson's Corner Meeting
- Statistics Canada Releases Free Road Network File 2006 In GML
- News and Opinion From The Blogosphere
- Website of the Month

DEPARTMENTS

- New Members
- OGC In The News
- Events
- Contact
- Subscribe/Unsubscribe

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Back issues of OGC News are available:
http://www.opengeospatial.org/press/?page=newsletter

*****

CTO'S MESSAGE

Fit for Purpose Microformats

At a recent keynote address, I spoke about various technology and
market tensions that are powerful forces impacting and reshaping our
geospatial discipline. I also spoke of the implications these powerful
forces will have on how we shape and create standards for the global
geospatial community. Many of these tensions and associated market
forces are the same ones that are driving the evolution of the Web
(known as Web 2.0) and the integrated GeoWeb.

One tension that hits very close to home is a phenomenon of “fit for
purpose,” simple data encodings often referred to as "microformats."
>From the Microformats website [http://microformats.org/],
microformats are "designed for humans first and machines second,
microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon
existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what
works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by
adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns" (e.g. RSS, XHTML,
blogging).

These formats are: developed quickly, very lightweight, limited in
scope, semantically adequate in terms of the problem they solve,
typically developed outside any standards organization, and permeate
the structure of the Internet/Web much more rapidly than "traditional"
standards do. These are characteristics of so many aspects of Web 2.0.
The tension, or market force, to be considered is how (or does) a
traditional standards setting organization such as the OGC fit into
this development environment? A related example of this type of
tension is the ascendancy of dynamic programming languages for Web
development. In both instances, the key phrases are "open," "dynamic,"
"lightweight," "easy to implement," and "easy to learn."

Yes, microformats are built upon existing standards. This is good.
However, from a standards setting organizations perspective, how do we
respond to the requirements of the ever evolving, ever changing Web
2.0 community? Organizations such as the OGC are often viewed from the
outside as "slow," "stodgy," "heavyweight," with standards that are
"difficult to learn" and "hard to implement."

Well, being the eternal optimist, I see a strong synergy between what
we in the OGC do and can do and what the "wild Web" is demanding.
First, we have developed a standard, GML, that is becoming the
cornerstone for many of the "geo" related microformats. Examples are
the GML serialization of GeoRSS, the use of GML Point profile in the
IEEE 1451 Standard, and the use of GML in the Presence Identity Data
Format (PIDF - an internet RFC). In these cases, OGC staff and members
have been involved with other key players in the broader IT domain to
develop these microformats. However, all has not been rosy in terms of
getting other groups to see the value of GML - for the reasons I
stated above. Another key aspect of this synergy is that the OGC can
learn and evolve our standards setting process based on the
experiences of collaborations that have been developing microformats
outside the OGC. We can streamline the process, create profiles of
existing standards that are lightweight, much easier to learn and use,
and change how we collaborate with outside organizations.

This synergy goes both ways. Collaborations that develop microformats
outside a standards group can bring these specifications into a
standards organization, such as the OGC. The external collaboration
can quickly define, test, and implement a microformat and then submit
the specification to a standards organization without giving up
control or having that standards organization take control. Instead,
the standards organization enables a broad spectrum of geospatial
technology developers and technology consumers to review the
microformat, provide input, and potentially approve that microformat
as an international standard.

There is great value in having such branding: Many organizations
simply will not use a microformat - no matter how good - unless it has
the stamp of approval from a standards organization. The IT and
Communications systems we all rely on are built on international
standards, standards that have been vetted by an international
community, standards that will be around and supported for many, many
years. Another important point to consider is that standards
organizations such as the OGC work hard to insure that our standards
are unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR), restrictive
patents, and other issues that can restrict or prevent the
nondiscriminatory, widespread, free use of a standard. Furthermore,
the OGC and other standards organizations act as catalysts to make
sure that the availability of a standard is broadly communicated and
made available to the global IT community.

For a microformat to truly succeed - as evidenced by takeup in both
the traditional and non-traditional enterprises - requires the synergy
between the dynamic world of the web 2.0 developer community and the
more structured (but also dynamic) world of the traditional standards
setting community.

Carl Reed
Chief Technology Officer
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

*****

NEWS FROM THE TYSON'S CORNER MEETING

The 58th OGC Technical Committee (TC) meetings provided a great venue
where 34 Working Groups met over a four-day period. Sponsors ESRI
(Gold), Autodesk (Silver), Boeing (Silver), and e|spatial (Silver)
provided resources to make this a very successful meeting.

As always, there were numerous excellent presentations in the Working
Group meetings. We also had four very informative presentations at the
opening and closing plenaries:

-  "Aeronautical Information eXchange Model (AIXM), GML, and Temporal"
  Brett Brunk (FAA) and Jeff Bell
-  "Temporal Web Map Service: Exploiting Baseline OGC Web Services for
  Tracking and Locating Scenarios" Jeff Yutzler, Ionic Enterprise
-  "NASA and Google partner to make geospatial information more
  universally accessible and useful" Chris Kemp, NASA
-  "Location Services, Landmarks, Perception, and Routing -
  Implications for standards" Dr. Alexander Klippel, University of
  Melbourne

A number of motions approved by the members allow several new
standards and revisions to existing OGC standards forward towards
public release. The following document votes occurred:

-  “FGDC CSGDM Application Profile for Catalog Services for the Web
  (CS-W)” (06-129) as a Best Practices Paper.
-  “EO Products Extension Package for ebRIM (ISO/TS 15000-3) Profile
  of CSW 2.0” (06-131) as an OGC Discussion Paper
-  “WMS Application Profile for the Interactive Browse of EO Products”
  (06-093) as an OGC Discussion Paper.
-  ISO 19123:2005 to replace the current version of OGC Abstract
  Specification, Topic 6 - Coverages, jointly developed by the OGC and
  ISO.

And key standards approval votes for adoption:

-  “Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model (GeoDRM RM)”
  (06-004r4) as an official topic volume of the OGC Abstract
  Specification.
-  OWS Common version 1.1 as an official OpenGIS(R) specification.
-  Simple Feature Access documents for Common Architecture and SQL
  Access (06-103r2 & 06-104r2) as approved OpenGIS Specifications,
  version 1.2.
-  TransducerML (06-010r4) as an official OGC implementation
  specification, Version 1.0.
-  Sensor Planning Service (05-089r3) as an official OGC
  implementation specification, Version 1.0.
-  Sensor Observation Service (05-088r3) as an official OGC
  implementation specification, Version 1.0.
-  SensorML (06-051r1) as an official OGC implementation
  specification, Version 1.0.
-  “Web Coverage Service 1.1” (06-083r7) as an official OpenGIS
  specification, version 1.1.

The 59th OGC Technical Meetings will be held in San Diego the week of
December 11, 2006. These meetings will be sponsored by BAE Systems.

*****

STATISTICS CANADA RELEASES FREE ROAD NETWORK FILE 2006 IN GML

One of the key benefits of the new product
[http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss/2006Dissemination/Data/FRR_RNF_e.cfm
] is its format: standard Geography Markup Language (GML). This
XML-based text format lends itself not only to use in commercial and
open source GIS tools, but also to access using standard XML style
sheets and tools for analysis, visualization and reporting. The GML
standard leverages several modern internet standards and is a key
component of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI). The
availability of this core dataset as GML will provide additional
momentum in the advancement of the CGDI.

*****

NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

Discussions of OGC specifications and interfaces are popping up all
over the blogosphere (the world of blogs). A few posts worthy of note
follow.

Jon at the Geoservice Oriented Architecture Blog
[http://gsoa.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-is-georss.html] notes that
GeoRSS is an OGC standard.

"GeoRSS just became an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard
on..."

Carl Reed, OGC CTO responds: "GeoRSS is not an OGC standard. The
current GeoRSS Version 1 specification is the result of a
collaboration of many individuals, including OGC staff and members.
The intent is to take the work of the GeoRSS collaboration as defined
in the Version 1 document into the OGC for discussion and feedback
into the GeoRSS collaboration. Further, we would like to have GeoRSS
version 1 approved as an international best practices statement for
how to encode location into syndicated feeds (RSS)."

Guilhem Vellut writing at The Pochi Superstar Mega Show!
[http://thepochisuperstarmegashow.com/2006/09/14/from-the-foss4g-2006/]
shares what he learned at the FOSS4G conference in Switzerland held in
September.

"The second conference [session] I went to was made by Raj Singh of
the OGC and was about Lightweight SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure). A
few highlights of the talk: The 1.0 version of GeoRSS should be
announced very very soon; The OGC is thinking about a WFS Basic, to
have simpler (to use and implement) subset of the WFS functionalities;
He also talked about standard tiling scheme for WMS."

Ron Exler [http://www.thegeofactor.com/about-the-geo-factor/] writes
in his blog The GeoFactor [http://www.thegeofactor.com/] about the
OGC Interoperability Day held last week in conjunction with other
meetings going on in Vienna Virginia. He uses the term "fascinating"
quite a bit in his two part overview.
Part 1 -
[http://www.thegeofactor.com/2006/10/05/open-geospatial-consortium-interoperability-day-part-one/]
Part 2 -
[http://www.thegeofactor.com/2006/10/06/open-geospatial-consortium-interoperability-day-part-two/]

*****

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

Live Weather (Australia)

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) developed the Live
Weather [http://www.metvis.com.au/gis/index.html]  spatially enabled
weather information service. It uses OGC standards to offer Web
services including Web Map Service and Web Feature Service (WMS/WFS)
access to near real-time weather information. The weather data can
also be accessed in spatial formats and encodings (e.g. shapefile or
GML) for display or integration into a user’s own spatial data and
management systems.

The ABM offers a Weather Data Viewer
[http://ows.bom.gov.au/mapserver/]  built on MapServer that offers
forecasts, a variety of wind, humidity and other readings, radar data,
thunderstorm data and more. It offers check boxes to turn on layers,
and the option to see the GML for the layer (left column in image) or
just that layer as a graphic file (bitmap).

Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real
world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Or of a website that
enhances the use and understanding of OGC’s work? Drop the   editor
[mailto:adena at opengeospatial.org]  an e-mail with the details
including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications
used, technology used and the goal of the website.

*****

NEW MEMBERS

OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.

Analytical Graphics, Inc. (US)
[http://www.agi.com]
Technical

Carolinas HealthCare System (US)
[http://www.carolinashealthcare.org/]
Guest

Maptel Pty. Ltd.  (Australia)
[http://www.maptel.com.au/]
Small Company

National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) (US)
[http://www.nist.gov/]
Associate

NavisWorks Inc.  (US)
[http://www.navisworks.com]
Associate

Onuma, Inc. (US)
Small Company

Research Center Karlruhe  (Germany)
[http://www.fzk.de]
Research Institute / Not For Profit Institute

SAG, CeGIT, Center für GeoInformationsTechnologie (Germany)
[http://www.sag.de]
Associate

Synergy Integration Ltd. (Israel)
Associate

TerraGo Technologies (US)
[http://www.terragotech.com/]
Small Company

University of the Bundeswehr – IT IS (Germany)
[http://www.unibw.de/itis]
University

University of California at Davis (US)
http://www.ucdavis.edu/
University

University of Kansas (US)
[http://www.ittc.ku.edu/]
University

Yale University (US)
[http://www.peabody.yale.edu/]
University

*****

OGC IN THE NEWS

- OGC in the Press

GML Profiles and Applications Build the GeoWeb
[http://www.geoplace.com/uploads/FeatureArticle/0610_GMLDEVELOPMENT.asp]
Ron Lake
GeoWorld
Sept 28, 2006-10-03

Discover the Significance of Sensor Webs
[http://www.geoplace.com/uploads/FeatureArticle/0610_OPENGEOSPATIALCONNECTION.asp
]
Mark Reichardt
GeoWorld
Sept 28, 2006-10-03

RFP Checklist: Geographic information systems
[http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/21_18/emerging-tech/29317-1.html]
S. Michael Gallagher
Washington Technology
Sept. 18, 2006

CCGIS becomes OGC Principal Member
[http://www.ccgis.de/ticker_en.html]
Sept 7, 2006

OGC Sensor Web Enablement Standards
[http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/P_84.htm]
George Percivall and Carl Reed
Sensors and Transducers Journal
September 2006

- OGC Press Releases

Mash-Up Event to Unite Leading Minds From the Geographic Information
Industry [http://www.opengeospatial.org/node/615]
October 12, 2006

OGC Appoints European Business Development Director
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/node/626]
October 6, 2006

OGC Seminar Will Demonstrate Benefits of Geospatial Interoperability
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/node/624]
September 21, 2006

*****

EVENTS

October 20, 2006
Southampton, UK
UK Geospatial Mash-Up
[http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=16865]  (pdf)

November 6-10
Santiago, Chile
GSDI 9 [http://www.gsdi9.cl/]

November 13-16, 2006
Orlando, Florida
GEOINT [http://www.geoint2006.com/]

November 14-15, 2006
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
ISO/TC 211 23th Plenary [http://www.isotc211.org/ ]

November 27-29, 2006
Torrejon air base - Madrid (Spain)
ESA-EUSC 2006: Image Information Mining for Security and Intelligence
[http://earth.esa.int/rtd/Events/ESA-EUSC_2006/index.html]

December 11-14, 2006
San Diego, CA
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/0612tc]

January 22-25, 2006
Hyderabad, India
Map World Forum [http://www.mapworldforum.org/]

For further info on events please contact Greg Buehler
[mailto:gbuehler at opengeospatial.org] .

*****

CONTACT

Please send comments and suggestions to:

Adena Schutzberg [mailto:adena at opengeospatial.org]
Editor, OGC News

Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street Suite 5
Wayland MA 01778-5037
USA Phone: +1 508 655 5858
Fax: +1 508 655 2237

*****

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