Category: OGC

As a long time user of their OS MasterMap GML viewer, I was really pleased to see Snowflake release their new GML Viewer which Snowflake claims can display any GML2/3 application schema. The snowflake guys really understand GML, as an XML dialect, a good application should be able to parse the contents of a “new” file and work out what to do with it, in the past too many vendors have made the short cut of writing tools for specific application schemas – which is only viable in the short term.

To complete my gushing… the GML viewer is a true cross platform java2se application which works on Windows, Linux, Solaris and OS X !!

Written and submitted from Starbucks,Holborn, using the t-mobile wifi connection.

As Martin points out in his return to blogging (welcome back !!) one of the most interesting presentations at this OGC TC meeting was the one given by Raj Singh on GeoRSS.

GeoRSS is a rapidly developing standard to encode locations into RSS feeds, so that for example, your blog aggregator software could subscribe to blogs whose entries relate to locations within 50 km’s of where you live, and of course to allow this to happen, also allow authors to tag their content with geographic location.

The real challenge here is to keep this encoding simple, following the rationale of RSS itself, while also allowing for more complex geographic information than simple Lat,Long pairs.

The approach taken so far is too offer two encoding types simple and gml which work with the Atom standard to extend RSS.

The Simple encoding which will meet the needs of most users take the form;

<georss:point>45.256 -71.92</georss:point>

While the more flexible GML encoding embeds GML features, offering more flexibility including different co-ordinate systems, and uses the form

<gml:Point>
   <gml:pos>45.256 -71.92</gml:pos>
</gml:Point>

Both encodings also support tagging line-strings, polygons and envelopes (MBRs).

There is real potential here for a standard to bring geographic information to the mainstream, however we also need to recognise there are other encoding out there and geoRSS will have to make it’s case against gpx, kml etc.

Look out for geoRSS entries from edparsons.com in the near future !

Written and submitted from The Marriott Hotel, Huntsville, using the hotel in-room internet connection.

It is not often you get driving instructions which use Rockets as landmarks, but picking up my hire car I was told to turn of the highway when I went passed the Saturn V !

Huntsville is very much a town with technology at it’s heart, home to the Marshall Space Centre, and numerous defence companies including from the world of GI, Intergraph.

Yesterday was the first day of the Technical Committee meeting of the OGC, I try to attend at least one a year, although the OS is always represented. For the newcomer the consensus approach of a standards organisation can appear to be mind-numbing, with formal processes and much intense study of detailed technical documentation. From this intense work however has come the key standards for geospatial interoperability, the Web Map and Feature Services and Geographic Mark-up Language.

It can be argued that OGC standards are less relevant with the emergence of GMY’s popular and proprietary mapping applications. However the counter argument to this is that all this applications are really only as good as the data in them, and once you start wanting to obtain more local information from 3rd party sources, interoperability will become a real issue, and Google are attending their first OGC meeting here in Huntsville.

The real challenge for the OGC will be to see our quickly it can adopt a rapidly developing standard that is emerging from the blogosphere GeoRSS – more details later this week – watch this space !

Written and submitted from The Marriott Hotel, Huntsville, using the hotel in-room internet connection.

Today I attended a meeting of around 30 UK based members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), called by David Schell and Mark Reichardt who are in the UK to canvas the opinions of OGC members. This example of the OGC wanting to understand the point of view of members based this side of the pond is clearly commendable, many in our industry still see the OGC as a US-centric rather than a global organisation.

The OGC quite rightly see outreach as a key goal for the next year, and this was confirmed by the general sentiment of the meeting – indeed there was a very strong feeling that the OGC needs to concentrate less on the development and communication of technical interface standards, and focus on explaining the benefits of interoperability of geospatial systems in a business context.

“What does this mean for me.. ” is a core message to define in marketing any product or idea to potential customers and I guess we can all be guilty of concentrating on the technical details, leaving the poor customer behind. Are OGC guilty of this – well as somebody pointed out today, imagine if you were new to geographic information and you visited the OGC website.. would you be any wiser – I’m afraid not.

Full credit to David and Mark for taking these points onboard, the message from the UK seems to be – Concentrate more on the WHY not the HOW !!

Written and submitted from the Apple Store Regent Street, using its free 802.11 network.