---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 17:17:15 -0400
From: Lance McKee <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OpenGIS standards for geographic grid coverages and catalogs
This message is being posted to several lists. We apologize for
cross-postings.
Lance McKee
--------------------------------
PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information about this announcement, contact:
Lance McKee, Vice President Corporate Communications
Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street
Wayland, MA 01778
USA
tel: +1-508-655-5858
fax: +1-508-655-2237
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
OPEN TECHNOLOGY FOR A "SPATIALLY ENABLED WEB" ANNOUNCED
Wayland, MA, USA, August 18, 1999: Maps and map queries will become a much
more important part of the Web thanks to two key interoperability standards
passed by members of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) on August 13 in
Southampton, England. The standards will make it much easier for
businesses, citizens, and governments to find, view, pan, zoom, overlay,
and query geographic image data and map data on the Worldwide Web.
The new OpenGIS Grid Coverages Specification and OpenGIS Distributed
Catalog Services Specification, combined with the already available OpenGIS
Simple Features Specification and technology from OGC's Web Mapping
Testbed, provide the means for unprecedented interoperability between
systems that use geospatial data. In OGC, "Grid Coverages" refers to
satellite images, digital aerial photos, digital elevation data, and other
kinds of data represented in a grid cell or "raster" coordinate system.
"Simple Features" refers to "vector" geodata, digital map information
represented in polygons and lines. "Catalog Services" refers to a common
architecture for online automated directories of geodata and geoprocessing
services, rather like "spatial search engines."
Cadcorp (UK), ESRI (US), Intergraph (US), Laser-Scan (UK), Oracle (US), and
PCI Geomatics (Canada) made up the team that submitted the OpenGIS Grid
Coverages Implementation Specification in response to an OGC Request for
Technology (RFT). PCI Geomatics took the lead in this effort. A grid
coverage interface provides basic image access capability for purposes of
viewing a grid coverage and performing certain kinds of analysis, such as
histogram calculation, image covariance and other statistical measurements.
(Interoperability for a wider range of image operations awaits the OpenGIS
Image Exploitation Services Specification, which is in progress in OGC's
Technical Committee.) The specification supports the GeoTIFF file format,
various color models, variable value sequencing and pixel ordering, and all
standard grid geometries and spatial referencing systems (consistent with
geometries and spatial referencing in the OpenGIS Simple Features
Specification).
In Southampton, Cadcorp was applauded for its demonstration of a client
application panning, zooming, and querying grid coverage data on multiple
vendors' servers through interfaces on the client and servers which conform
to the new OpenGIS Grid Coverages Specification.
Bob Moses, President of PCI Geomatics, said, "The simple maps and Earth
images you've seen on the web up until now don't really show what's ahead.
Geospatial technologies are so specialized and hard to integrate that they
haven't been part of most peoples' information environment. Now that's
going to change. We are adding 'where' to the kinds of questions the web
can answer."
The OpenGIS Distributed Catalog Services Implementation Specification
specifies standard interfaces for online geospatial resource discovery and
access services. Submitters of this specification included: Blue Angel
Technologies (US), ESRI (US), Geomatics Canada (Canada Centre for Remote
Sensing (CCRS)), Intergraph (US), Marconi Integrated Systems (UK), MITRE
(US), Oracle (US), U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and U.S. National
Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). Other contributors included: Compusult
Limited (Canada), GEODAN IT bv (Netherlands), HJW (US), Joint Research
Centre - European Commission, and SICAD Geomatics (Germany).
Software systems with interfaces that conform to the Catalogs specification
will be able to:
-- Discover network-resident geospatial information resources in a
distributed heterogeneous computing environment.
-- Create and maintain universally discoverable geospatial catalogs and
catalog entries.
-- Create and maintain collections of universally discoverable geospatial
data sets, including a metadata set and metadata entities associated with
each stored data set. (The Specification does not specify metadata
content. Rather, it specifies the way the metadata content is presented for
discovery.) The Specification will allow use of metadata entities and
elements that are a subset of the metadata currently defined in the ISO
TC211 15046-15 draft document on metadata. Also, it will allow systems to
associate metadata with individual data sets, a series of data sets, and
individual features within a data set as currently defined in the ISO
working document.
-- Discover the content and structure of geospatial resources available
online in conformant servers.
-- Perform query (or selection) operations supporting discovery and access,
including spatial, temporal, text, and/or numeric values, Boolean
operations, spatial queries (e.g., intersect, contains, contained by,
within, beyond, etc.); and deliver identity of resources (e.g., catalogs
and feature collections) as a result of the query.
-- Retrieve complete or partial forms of geodata resources, including
entire geospatial data sets or geographical subsections of data sets,
returned to the requestor as a file or set of files.
Products conforming to the catalog specification will simplify the lives of
users of geodata and geoprocessing working in conventional application
areas. But many in OGC believe the specification's greatest impact will
come in the development of a much larger market for specialized geodata and
geoservices, and the emergence of a "spatially aware" Internet.
David Schell, President of OGC, said, "Various vendors are already offering
products that conform to the OpenGIS Simple Features Specification, and we
anticipate that many more will soon be productizing interfaces conforming
to all three released specifications. Knowledgeable buyers are demanding
interoperable products, and end users will be amazed at the variety and
value of the geographic information and services these products make
available."
The complete OpenGIS Grid Coverages Implementation Specification and
Catalog Services Implementation Specification will be released to the
public on OGC's web site (http://www.opengis.org) next year, after final
editing and a brief period during which the specification will be available
exclusively to Consortium members.
OGC is an international, not-for profit organization working toward
integration of geospatial capabilities into the world's information systems.
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