OGC Invites Comment on GML Simple Features Specification

The Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. (OGC) (MA, USA) invites public comment on a candidate specification that will soon be presented for approval by OGC members as an OpenGIS Implementation Specification Profile.

The OGC candidate specification, ‘GML simple features profile’ is available for downloading from www.opengeospatial.org/specs/?page=requests&request=rfc22. Comments can be submitted to gmlsf-rfc@opengeospatial.org for a thirty day period ending 4th August 2005. Comments received will be consolidated and reviewed by OGC members for incorporation into the proposed specification.

The Geography Markup Language (GML) is an XML grammar for the encoding of geographic information including geographic features, coverages, observations, topology, geometry, coordinate reference systems, units of measure, time, and value objects. The GML Simple Feature Profile candidate specification defines a set of schema encoding rules that allow simple features, such as points, lines, and polygons, to be described using GML application schemas.

This specification defines: rigid coding patterns for the use of a subset of XML Schema constructs (XML Schema profile) and also rigid coding patterns for the use of a subset of GML constructs (GML profile). It prescribes the encoding of GML application schemas in sufficient detail that client applications do not need to deal with the entire scope of XML-Schema and GML but only need to accommodate a restricted subset of both specifications in order to be able to interpret schema documents generated by servers offering data encoded in GML. Easier interpretation of GML application schemas will enhance interoperability between clients and servers and make the task of implementing client applications easier.

The following organisations submitted the draft specification for consideration: Cadcorp Ltd. (UK), CubeWerx Inc. (Canada), ESRI (USA), Galdos (Canada), Interactive Instruments (Germany) and PCI Geomatics (Canada). BAE Systems (USA), CSIRO (Australia), and the US Census Bureau also contributed to the effort.