Request for Comments (RFC) on the GeoLinking Service Standard

The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is requesting comments on the candidate standard OpenGIS(R) GeoLinking Service (GLS) Interface.

The candidate GLS standard defines an interface for services that provide the ability to "link" data that contain information about geographic objects, such as census tract population statistics, with data in another repository that contains the actual geometry (points, lines, polygons). For example, a table of populations of cities on one server may not contain the geometry information that describes the cities' locations and boundaries, while a second server may house the cities' geometry. The candidate GLS standard describes a set of interfaces for both servers that lets the city name be used as a "common geographic identifier" to join the population data to its geometry, so the user can create a map or perform geospatial analysis on the linked data.