OGC Newsletter - September 2001

September 2001

CONTENTS
The View From Here
Presidents Message
News From the Arlington, Virginia Meeting
On Standards
OGC Welcomes a New Board Member
Available Specifications
Contracts and Implementations
Implementations and Conformance Testing of OGC Specifications
Member Corner
New Members
OGC In The News
Events
Contact
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Back issues of OGC News are available.


THE VIEW FROM HERE

The momentum grows for OpenGIS specifications and the products that implement them. To match the quickening pace of change, OGC is considering a more timely method of delivering information. OGC would like your input on an e-mail service that would send e-mail news flashes when significant events or milestones are reached. These might include information about new conformant products, new implementations, meetings, opportunities for funding, etc. The frequency might be as often as several times per month. We would only send such e-mails with your permission.

If you would be interested this type of service, please let me know. If the response is positive, we will establish this News Flash service and provide a subscription mechanism.

Adena Schutzberg
Editor, OGC News
adena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

OGC's September 10-14 Technical Committee and Planning Committee meetings were somber and uneasy due to the meetings' physical proximity to the attack on the Pentagon that week and due to the heartbreaking news of the attack on the World Trade Center. We extend our deepest sympathies to readers of this newsletter who are grieving for someone lost in these disasters. And we thank all the OGC member representatives from around the world who expressed their sympathy and solidarity. I feel personally blessed that this organization makes me part of a true international community.

Despite the emotional difficulty, the meetings went on because there was a general sense that the best thing we could all do, the best contribution we could make, would be to carry our work forward.

I want to personally thank everyone who attended the meetings this month, and I look forward to seeing you again in December.

David Schell, President, Open GIS Consortium

NEWS FROM THE ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA MEETING

Despite the horrible events of Tuesday, Sept 11 the OGC TC and PC meetings were highly productive. The various OGC Special Interest Groups (SIG), Working Groups (WG), and Revision Working Groups (RWG) worked hard and made considerable progress on many fronts. Some of the key decisions and recommendations from the week are:

1. The Architecture SIG recommended to essentially replace Topic 12 (Services) of the OGC Abstract Specification with the corresponding ISO TC 211 document (19119) along with some minor modifications to 19119 to reflect OGC requirements. This is a significant move in terms of a) bringing the Abstract Specification up to date and b) improving the alignment of OGC and ISO activities.

2. There was considerable discussion about the GML and ISO 19118 harmonization issue. Based on these discussions, it is recommended to both OGC and ISO/TC 211 that a New Work Item Proposal be started in TC 211 to create an International Standard based on the OGC GML specification so that the harmonization process can take place within a single structure. The OGC Technical Committee (TC) and Planning Committee (PC) approved this recommendation.

3. An interesting topic was discussed in the Coordinate Transformation WG. This resulted in a recommendation to the TC and the PC that usage of the reference to EPSG:4326 in the WMS v1.1 paragraph 6.5.5.1 in OGC documents and interfaces be discontinued. Further, the OGC requests that the EPSG (organization) provide a projected CRS that properly describes the practice. This was passed by the TC and the PC.

4. The Documentation Sub-Committee Charter and Mission was approved. The DOC Sub-committee also had discussions on various topics, including upgrades to the Abstract Specification and how to handle terms and definitions.

5. The GML RWG recommended that the GML Specification v2.1 document, including the revised schemas, be put to electronic vote of the TC and moved forward as the most current and correct version of GML. This also passed.

6. The WWW SIG moved that the Web Terrain Server change status from an Interoperability Program Report to an official OGC Discussion Paper.

Carl Reed, Specification Program Manager

ON STANDARDS

In this month's column I will highlight several organizations related to the development of foundational Location-Based Services including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Location Interoperability Forum, 3GPP and 3GPP2, and Parlay. These groups represent a small but important set of organizations engaged in the convergence of the worlds of wireless communications and Internet services.

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), http://www.ietf.org/, is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The technical work of the IETF is done in its working groups, which are organized by topic into several areas (e.g., routing, transport, security, etc.). The IETF holds meetings three times per year. During 2000, the IETF had a "Birds of a Feather" ad- hoc that focused on the issue of location and the Internet. In 2001, these discussions resulted in a new Working Group for Geographic Location and Privacy called for short GeoPriv. The mission of GeoPriv is:

"As more and more resources become available on the Internet, some applications need to acquire geographic location information about certain resources or entities. These applications include navigation, emergency services, management of equipment in the field, and other location-based services. But while the formatting and transfer of such information is in some sense a straightforward process, the implications of doing it, especially in regards to privacy and security, are anything but. The primary task of this working group will be to assess the authorization, integrity and privacy requirements that must be met in order to transfer such information, or authorize the release or representation of such information through an agent."

OGC Staff are currently participating in the GeoPriv Working Group. We are looking to provide domain knowledge and expertise in the area of location. We encourage OGC members to join this Working Group and provide input and/or writing assets.

The Location Interoperability Forum (LIF) http://www.locationforum.org/, is a global industry initiative, formed jointly by Ericsson, Motorola, SignalSoft, Nokia and Siemens with the purpose of developing and promoting common and ubiquitous solutions for Mobile Location Services (MLS) within carrier wireless network operational support systems. LIF's goal is for location services to be independent of network protocol and positioning technology. To achieve this goal, LIF makes recommendations on network protocols and interface specifications to position technologies to relevant standards organizations like Parlay, ETSI, and TIA as well as OGC. LIF protocols and specifications aim to provide a simple and secure access method to allow user appliances and Internet applications to access basic location information from wireless networks, without regard to underlying air interface technologies and positioning technologies. This interoperability is exemplified in the LIF Mobile Location Protocol, a specification designed to interface between a Mobile Positioning Server and a location-based application or service. OGC is an active member of LIF, and many members of both organizations are participants in the OpenLS Initiative.

The MAGIC Services Forum, http://www.magicservicesforum.org/, was founded with the goal of defining location-based services for the telematics world, specifically navigation and location-based information delivery services. As existing in-car navigation and telematic services grow, MAGIC seeks to define a minimal set of generic geo-information services that will support these and future mobile Internet ventures. The MAGIC Forum intends to influence and augment the development of key wireless service protocols for location-aware mobile terminals underway in the Internet Engineering Taskforce, WAP Forum, OGC, LIF and W3C. Initial efforts of the Forum focus on Client Service API's. MAGIC Service API's will be examined as part of OGC's OpenLS initiative. MAGIC represents the interests of a number of companies such as Tele Atlas, Navigation Technologies, Microsoft, MobileGIS and others, a number of whom are also OGC member organizations.

Parlay, http://www.parlay.org, is an initiative to provide an open "umbrella architecture" to provide network neutral application portability. The APIs developed by Parlay membership will allow applications/components to be developed and implemented independent of the underlying network. Parlay's contributions are important for wireless and for location services; they underpin the contributions of LIF and OGC. At the intersection of Web, wireless and GIS technologies, Location Services give everyone the ability to exploit location information anywhere, anytime, and on any device. OGC is working through SUN and through the JAVA Community Program to insert OGC technology into this initiative.

The Third Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP, www.3g-generation.com, is an international effort working to develop worldwide standards for third-generation mobile phone services. The project is made up of standards organizations and other related bodies that have agreed to cooperate to produce a complete set of global technical specifications for a 3G mobile system based on GSM and radio access technologies.

The Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), http://www.3gpp2.org/, is a collaborative third generation (3G) telecommunications standards-setting project comprising North American and Asian interests developing global specifications for ANSI/TIA/EIA-41 "Cellular Radiotelecommunication Intersystem Operations network evolution to 3G, and global specifications for the radio. 3GPP2 was born out of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) International Mobile Telecommunications "IMT-2000" initiative, covering high speed, broadband, and Internet Protocol (IP)-based mobile systems featuring network-to-network interconnection, feature/service transparency, global roaming and seamless services independent of location. IMT-2000 is intended to bring high-quality mobile multimedia telecommunications to a worldwide mass market by achieving the goals of increasing the speed and ease of wireless communications, responding to the problems faced by the increased demand to pass data via telecommunications, and providing "anytime, anywhere" services.

The JAVA Community Process http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/java_community_process.html includes an expert group that has transformed Parlay UML into a Java Standard. The JAIN (JAVA Application Integrated Network) SPA expert group consists of: BT, AT&T, IBM, Lucent, Nokia, Oracle, Telcordia, SUN and others. These APIs are defined at http://java.sun.com/products/jain. JAIN SPA Framework and Mobility APIs define secure interfaces for access between the Mobile Positioning Server and location-based services and thus integrate wire line, wireless, and packet-based networks. JAIN SPA Mobility APIs are for use in a Parlay Client environment, and under this effort are focused specifically for portable location-based services. These APIs are functionally compatible with Parlay 2.1, Mobility Interfaces. JAIN SPA Mobility APIs define: User Location Camel Service, User Location Service, User Location Emergency Service, and User Status Service. Several JAIN SPA Mobility implementations support these services (e.g., Incomit, Ulticom, Ericsson, Siemens, Lucent, etc.). These API's are part of the OpenLS testbed.

In my next article, I will discuss the Geography Markup Language (GML), its critical role in geoprocessing and location services, and the important topic of maintaining harmonization with major standards bodies.

Cliff Kottman, VP and Chief Scientist, Open GIS Consortium

OGC WELCOMES A NEW BOARD MEMBER

OGC announces that Dr. Mike Jackson, Head of Geospatial Systems at Hutchison3G UK Ltd (H3G), has joined OGC's Board of Directors. Dr. Jackson is currently responsible for the architecture and design of geospatial technology at H3G, a third generation mobile telecommunications company, and its partner companies worldwide. Before joining H3G, Dr. Jackson was the Chief Executive of Laser-Scan Holdings (UK), a leading geographic information systems (GIS) company, for ten years.

OGC Board of Directors
http://www.opengeospatial.org/about/board.htm

AVAILABLE SPECIFICATIONS

Several updates to the Abstract Specification and a new discussion paper were passed at the Arlington, VA meeting. See above article on News from the Arlington, VA meeting for details. The updated documents will be available soon on the OGC website.

OpenGIS Specifications
http://www.opengeospatial.org/specs/specs.htm

Discussion Papers
http://www.opengeospatial.org/specs/discussion.htm

CONTRACTS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS

Cubewerx, an active OGC member, in partnership with SIGNIANT provided the spatial data server reliable secure data transfer for a reference implementation in support of earth observation. The press release notes that the development of the reference implementation highlights "the benefits and flexibility of the open standards approach taken by both vendors."

http://www.signiant.com/news.html#aug282001

IMPLEMENTATIONS AND CONFORMANCE TESTING OF OGC SPECIFICATIONS

- Implementations

In an effort to expand the content of the OGC Specification Implementing Organizations web page, all member organizations and/or individuals are invited to submit the most current information for all products implementing OGC Specifications. This includes but is not limited to:

1. Organization Name

2. Product Name(s)

3. Specification (including revision number)

4. Type or Implementation Alternative (WMS Server or WMS Client for example)

5. A link to a relevant website (information, live-demo, etc...)

6. Contact information (name, email, phone, etc...)

Product and contact information from non-member organizations is encouraged. Information about the implementation of the GML (all versions) is also requested, including information about its usage capacity such as data storage, data transportation, data delivery, or whether it is built into specific products or used as an adopted standard for an organization.

We've received word of three new implementations since last month. International Interfaces, Inc. has implemented the Web Map Server Specification (WMS) in its WMS Server and Cookbook 1.0. MIT's Ortho Server also implements the WMS specification. SRI International's TerraVisions implements WMS on the client side.

With good participation from implementers this site can be a very valuable resource to the Open GIS community!

- Conformance Testing

OGC Staff and Members met during the September TC Meeting in Arlington, VA, to demonstrate prototype testing applications and to discuss the ongoing collaboration for the Web Map Services Specification conformance test suite. Presently the effort is focused on developing a common data model for a standardized test suite. The uniform test cases will allow multiple organizations to host testing services. Leading this effort are Social Change Online with their online ConformIT testing laboratory, and Logicon TASC with their OCCAM secure testing facility. ESRI, Ionic, Intergraph, Laser- Scan, NASA, and the USGS are also contributing to the effort.

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please contact Mark Buehler, mbuehler [at] opengeospatial [dot] org

Implementations of OGC Specifications http://www.opengeospatial.org/cgi-bin/implement.pl

MEMBER CORNER

It is common practice to analyze OGC work before beginning any research and development project. In particular, we follow the harmonization between OGC and ISO and try to be compatible with the recommendations. For example, in a project where we developed an UML-base modeling tool with automatic code generation for GIS and DBMS, we extended the UML class model with spatial and temporal stereotypes and added corresponding metadata. We used OGC and ISO specs wherever we could; this included proper naming of fields in the repository (useful in an academic environment), specifying the exact OGC or ISO geometry in the design of the database, and generating code with these specs and XML.

Our own in-house geospatial data infrastructure, used for research and teaching purposes, depended on OGC and ISO work in the selection and naming of our metadata. We use the georeferenced digital catalog and the structure of the metadata to teach undergraduate and graduate students the vocabulary used by standard organizations.

Recent work on the GeoInnovation project led to an innovative solution called MAJIC which allows an organization to identify, store, filter and distribute to its users only the desired updates made to its spatial database. OGC and ISO standards were key elements in facilitating the integration of the updates into the client's database.

Yvan Bedard
Professor, Dept. of Geomatics Sciences
Laval University, Quebec City, Canada
Member, Centre for Research in Geomatics (CRG), Laval University

More information on above projects:
http://sirs.scg.ulaval.ca/perceptory
http://sirs.scg.ulaval.ca/majic

NEW MEMBERS

The Open GIS Consortium welcomes our members who've joined us since August 2001.

Bavarian Administration for Surveying and Cadastre
http://www.adv-online.de
Associate

BigTribe Corporation
http://www.bigtribe.com
Associate - Commercial

Geosoft Corporation
http://www.geosoft.com
Associate - Commercial

North Carolina State University
http://www.ncsu.edu
Associate - University

QinetiQ
http://www.qinetiq.com
Technical

Schlumberger Oil & Gas Information
http://www.is.slb.com/about/index.html
Technical

SignalSoft Corporation
http://www.signalsoftcorp.com
Technical

Telecontar
http://www.telcontar.com
Technical

University of Maryland
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu
Associate - University

Vodafone
http://www.vodafone.com
Technical

Harokopio University
http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr
Associate - University

OGC IN THE NEWS

-OGC in the Press

Intergraph's IntelliWhere Division Partners with Leading Industry Providers in Support of OGC OpenLS Initiative
http://www.intergraph.com/gis/newsroom/press01/OpenLS_rlsf.asp

- OGC Press Releases

September 14, 2001
OGC and FGDC Grow Interoperability in Local Governments
http://www.opengeospatial.org/press/?page=pressrelease&year=0&prid=65

September 7, 2001
Twenty-nine Sponsors and Participants Tackle Interoperable Location Services in OGC Testbed
http://www.opengeospatial.org/press/?page=pressrelease&year=0&prid=64

August 31, 2001
OGC Object Domain Modeling Support Initiative Request For Quotation Available
http://www.opengeospatial.org/press/?page=pressrelease&year=0&prid=63

EVENTS

December 3-7, 2001 Vancouver, BC, Canada
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings,
Hosted by Galdos, Inc., and GeoConnections

February 4-8, 2002 Location TBD,
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings

April 8-12, 2002 Location TBD,
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings

June 3-7, 2002 London, England,
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings,
Hosted by Cadcorp, Ltd.

OGC Events Calendar
http://www.opengeospatial.org/events/index.htm

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

CONTACT

Please send comments and suggestions to:

Adena Schutzberg
Editor, OGC News
adena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org

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Copyright 2001 by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.