Back in 2000, the OGC
Members determined that the W3C XLink recommendation was well suited to the
requirements for GML 2.0 as well as other OGC standards. However, at that time,
W3C did not have a XLink schema. Therefore, the OGC Members decided to define
an OGC XLink schema that was based on the W3C XLink recommendation. This XLink
schema is now used in numerous OGC standards (See below).