OGC Newsletter - January 2004

OGC News:

January 2004

CONTENTS

Presidents Message

News from the New York Meeting

Review Board Election Results

New Free Client Products

Website of the Month

DEPARTMENTS:
IP Update, New Members, OGC In The News, Events, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe

Back issues of OGC News are available.

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

Promoting "Market Uptake"

When users purchase OGC compliant products we call it "market uptake." Only with market uptake does the membership realize a return on ten years of collective effort and investment. Promoting uptake is thus a high priority for OGC's members, staff and board of directors.

"Market pull" (user demand) for interoperable solutions and products does not "magically appear" as specifications become adopted by the members. Most people are too busy to stay abreast of a highly technical standards activity like ours. And most people are only beginning to be aware of Web services, the underpinning for OGC Web Services, the focus of much of our activity. OGC Web Services offer tremendous potential benefits for agencies, companies and organizations. They can't realize these benefits, however, until their CIOs and technology buyers understand the value of deploying products based on OpenGIS(R) Specifications.

So OGC's staff, in addition to educating technology providers and solution providers, has stepped up efforts to help educate those providers' customers. In 2003 OGC published and promoted the WMS (Web Map Service) Cookbook to stimulate uptake among users. A WFS (Web Feature Service) cookbook is in production. In addition to OGC News, which goes out to more that 4,000 email subscribers, OGC launched OGC User in 2003. It's an online magazine of users' experiences with applications implementing OpenGIS specifications. OGC published several white papers recently on topics such as the Spatial Web, Information Interoperability, Sensor Web Enablement, Geospatial Fusion, and one titled "The Importance of Going Open". In 2003, OGC delivered chapters for several books, including an upcoming book from Morgan Kaufman about location based services. OGC launched a new, updated and reorganized website in 2003. And OGC continues to provide a steady stream of press releases, articles and columns to hardcopy and online publications.

OGC also engages in direct education. Working with other organizations in 2003, OGC held seminars and events such as the Emerging Technology Summit in the US and Interoperability Days in Europe. Also in 2003, OGC partnered with the Institute for Professional Education (IPE) to engage OGC members in developing and delivering comprehensive training courses on geospatial interoperability. (See www.ipeseminars.org.)

As part of its education mission, OGC directly helps user organizations prepare for interoperable geospatial solutions. In a vendor neutral, "white hat" capacity, OGC staff and consultants help organizations think about and plan for internal technology programs based on interoperability. Organizations in Europe, North America, and Australia have relied on OGC for such guidance. OGC doesn't build systems or plan them, but rather, at the request of members, confirms the standards-based architectural positions that they need to take. This work delivers an additional member benefit by encouraging user demand, and by sometimes revealing gaps in interoperability that constitute new requirements for OpenGIS specifications.

Learning requires repetition, so OGC's staff, directors and knowledgeable members need to continue to communicate to others the reasons for building nodes on an open Spatial Web. As success stories accumulate, the reasons become obvious and the Spatial Web's growth curve begins to look like the growth curve of the Web itself.

David Schell
President, OGC

NEWS FROM THE NEW YORK MEETING

The recent OGC Technical and Planning Committee meetings, hosted by the United Nations, were very well attended and very active. The following were the primary actions and votes that occurred at these meetings.

1. The OWS Common Implementation Specification (OGC document 03-088r6) was approved as an OGC Recommendation Paper. This document provides best practices for OGC Web Services specifications also known as the W*S specs. The goal for developing this document is increased interoperability for all OGC Web Services specifications.

2. The Catalog 2.0 document is being edited for approval by the Revision Working Group. The document will be posted when completed and made available for a 3 week review period prior to the vote.

There was discussion in the Planning Committee on profiles and the relationship of the OGC Registry/ebRIM registry as a normative profile to be part of the Catalog 2.0 document.

3. The GML 3.1 draft (OGC Document 03-105r1, ISO CD 19136) was submitted to the OGC Technical Committee for release as an electronic vote for adoption as an OpenGIS Recommendation Paper.

4. The Planning Committee recognized and thanked Clemens Portele for his dedication and hard work in bringing 19136 (GML 3.1) to Committee Draft International Standard status in ISO.

5. The Location Services Core Specification Package (gateway, directory, geocode, reverse geocode, navigation, portrayal) Version 1.0 (OGC Document number 03-006r3) was approved as an adopted OpenGIS Specification version 1.0.

6. The candidate Web Terrain Service (WTS) Interface specification as described in RFC submission 18 (document Number 03-081r2) and OGC document 04-001 (compiled comments on 03-081r2) was released for an electronic vote to adopt as an OpenGIS specification version 0.0.

7. OGC document No. 03-109 (the text which had been resubmitted to ISO for DIS [Draft International Standard] 19128, including modifications requested by the Berlin ISO meeting) was publicly issued as a Recommendation Paper. Document 03-109 is intended to be the "ISO standard version" of OGC's http-based Web Map Service specification. The document has not yet been released by ISO. When ISO officially releases DIS 19128, which differs slightly from WMS 1.2, OGC will hold an electronic vote to release it as WMS 1.3. At that point, the ISO Web Map Service standard and the OGC Web Map Service specification can be considered to be harmonized.

8. The slightly revised Topic 2 (Coordinate Reference System, or CRS) of the Abstract Specification was released, replacing the document approved at the October 2003 meeting. Topic 2 (CRS) will be sent to ISO TC 211 for its use in harmonizing OGC and ISO work.

9. It was agreed that revision history and release notes will be provided for any new version of an adopted OpenGIS Specification.

Lance McKee

REVIEW BOARD ELECTION RESULTS

The OGC Review Board Election closed on Friday, January 2, 2004. The review board is responsible for potential conflict resolution and appeals and provides an online mechanism for processing requests concerning such topics as working group disputes, process failures, questions of applicable procedure, and appeals. The elected representatives are:

Technical Committee Representatives:

David Case, MITRE
Graham Vowles, Ordnance Survey

Planning Committee Representatives:

David Danko, ESRI
Geoffrey Ehler, Lockheed-Martin

NEW FREE CLIENT PRODUCTS

Two free OGC based viewers were announced this month.

Freeware Gaia, from Nuke Goldstein, is a WMS/WFS/GML standalone client. Goldstein has a long history of involvement in OGC and is looking to continue that.

Cadcorp released its Cadcorp SIS Map Browser, a free OpenGIS data viewer for the Web. Map Browser will work only in conjunction with OpenGIS Web services and is client for OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) specifications. It also supports Geography Markup Language (GML) 2.1.2 and Web Map Context XML data sources.

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

As noted last month, it's time to cast the spotlight on websites that take advantage of OGC Web Services specifications. This month, we begin a new feature to do just that: our "Website of the Month".

Doug Cates of MoxiMedia shared a work in progress.

I have an Internet Mapping Framework (MoxiMedia's Web mapping development platform) example site that you may be interested in. It allows heads-up digitizing of spatial data using a web browser (IE, Netscape, Mozilla). Behind the scenes, the site uses WMS to display the map, and a transaction capable WFS to query and save the data.

In this example, MapServer and GeoServer are used, but the application uses only the WMS and WFS interfaces so any compliant product with similar capability could be used instead.

Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Drop the adena [at] opengeospatial.org (editor) an e-mail with the details including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications used, technology used and the goal of the website.

IP UPDATE

OGC Web Services (OWS-2)

The OWS-2 responses were due January 9, 2004. Interoperability Program staff members are evaluating proposals.

Emergency Mapping Symbology (EMS-1)

Emergency Mapping Symbology Initiative participants Galdos Systems, Compusult, and Cubewerx have begun work.

Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative (CIPI-1.2)

The CIPI-1.2 work is currently underway.

NEW MEMBERS

OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.

AED-SICAD Aktiengesellschaft (Germany)
Technical

Agip KCO N.V. (The Netherlands)
Technical

City of Fort Collins GIS (Colorado, US)
Government

Fundacao CPqD (Brazil)
Technical

Stuttgart University (Germany)
University

Telcontar (California, US)
Associate

OGC IN THE NEWS

OGC in the Press

Openness Feeds the Flames of Competition
Matt Ball
GeoWorld
January 2004

ESRI - Paving the Interoperability Path
ESRI Canada
January 26, 2004

CubeWerx Announces WMS Extensions for ESRI ArcGIS 8 and MapInfo Professional 7
CubeWerx
January 22,2004

ESRI Provides Leadership Role as OpenLS Version 1.0 Specification is Approved
ESRI
January 16, 2004

OGC Comments on Inaccuracies of Barrie Article
Carl Reed
Directions Magazine
January 13, 2004

Cadcorp Gains Six More OpenGIS Certificates
Cadcorp
January 12, 2004

University of Arkansas/CAST Leveraging the Power of IONIC for Its OpenGIS Efforts
IONIC Software
January 12, 2004

IONIC Software Announces Compliance in OpenGIS(R) Spatial Web Services
IONIC Software
January 5, 2003

OGC Press Releases

OGC Members Adopt Implementation Specification for Location Based Services
January 20, 2004

OGC Members Show Geospatial Software Interoperability at U.N.
January 30, 2004

EVENTS

January 30- 7 February 2004
Bangalore, India
GSDI 7

February 26-27 2004
Rome, Italy
Interoperability Seminar

February 2-6, 2004
San Diego, California
Boundaryless Information Flow & Open Standards and Certification
OGC members are eligible for a discounted rate. See member e-mail or contact Mark Reichardt.

March 28-30, 2004
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The GeoTec Event - Pathways to Integration:

April 19-23, 2004
Ottawa, Canada
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings

April 25-28, 2004
Seattle, Washington
GITA Annual Conference

July 5-23, 2004
Near Florence Italy
Summer School on Geographic Information Science

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