Open Geospatial Consortium
Encyclopedia
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization
, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 400 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations worldwide collaborate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards for geospatial
content and services, GIS
data processing
and data sharing.
Foundation, started in 1992.
From 1994 to 2004 the organization also used the name Open GIS Consortium.
The OGC website gives a detailed history of the OGC.
to serve specific needs for interoperable
location and geospatial technology, including GIS.
More information here: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards
The OGC standards baseline comprises more than 30 standards, including:
The design of standards were originally built on the HTTP web services paradigm
for message-based interactions in web-based systems. However, in the last year the members have started working on defining a common approach for SOAP protocol and WSDL
bindings. Considerable progress has been made in defining Representational State Transfer
(REST) web services.
(Geographic Information/Geomatics). Volumes from the ISO 19100 series under development by this committee progressively replace the OGC abstract specification. Further, the OGC standards Web Map Service, GML, Web Feature Service, Observations and Measurements
, and Simple Features Access have become ISO standards.
The OGC works with more than 20 international standards-bodies including W3C, OASIS
, WfMC
, and the IETF.
Standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...
, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 400 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations worldwide collaborate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards for geospatial
Geospatial
Geospatial analysis is an approach to applying statistical analysis and other informational techniques to geographically based data. Such analysis employs spatial software and analytical methods with terrestrial or geographic datasets, including geographic information systems and...
content and services, GIS
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
data processing
Data processing
Computer data processing is any process that a computer program does to enter data and summarise, analyse or otherwise convert data into usable information. The process may be automated and run on a computer. It involves recording, analysing, sorting, summarising, calculating, disseminating and...
and data sharing.
History
A predecessor organization, OGF, the Open GRASSGRASS GIS
GRASS GIS is a free, open source geographical information system capable of handling raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphic data....
Foundation, started in 1992.
From 1994 to 2004 the organization also used the name Open GIS Consortium.
The OGC website gives a detailed history of the OGC.
Standards
Most of the OGC standards depend on a generalized architecture captured in a set of documents collectively called the Abstract Specification, which describes a basic data model for representing geographic features. Atop the Abstract Specification members have developed and continue to develop a growing number of specifications, or standardsStandardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....
to serve specific needs for interoperable
Interoperability
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...
location and geospatial technology, including GIS.
More information here: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards
The OGC standards baseline comprises more than 30 standards, including:
- CSW - Catalog Service for the Web: access to catalog information
- GMLGeography Markup LanguageThe Geography Markup Language is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic transactions on the Internet...
- Geography Markup Language: XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-format for geographical information - GeoXACMLGeoXACMLGeoXACML stands for Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language. It defines a geo-specific extension to XACML Version 2.0, as it was ratified by OASIS standards organization on 1 February 2005....
- Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language ( in the process of standardization) - KML - KeyholeKeyhole, IncKeyhole, Inc., founded in 2001, was a pioneering software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications and was acquired by Google in 2004...
Markup Language: XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing (or future) Web-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers - Observations and MeasurementsObservations and MeasurementsObservations and Measurements is an International Standard which defines a conceptual schema encoding for observations, and for features involved in sampling when making observations...
- OGC Reference ModelOGC Reference ModelThe OGC Reference Model describes a framework for the ongoing work of theOpen Geospatial Consortium and their specifications and implementing interoperablesolutions and applications for geospatial services, data, and applications...
- a complete set of reference modelsReference ModelA reference model in systems, enterprise, and software engineering is a model of something that embodies the basic goal or idea of something and can then be looked at as a reference for various purposes.- Overview :... - OWS - OGC Web Service Common
- Sensor Observation Service (SOS)
- Sensor Planning Service (SPS)
- SensorMLSensorMLSensorML is an approved Open Geospatial Consortium standard. SensorML provides standard models and an XML encoding for describing sensors and measurement processes...
- Sensor Model Language - SFSSimple FeaturesSimple feature access , is both an OpenGIS and ISO Standard that specifies a common storage model of geographical data using well-known text . The geometries are also associated with spatial reference systems...
- Simple Features - SQL - Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD)Styled Layer DescriptorA Styled Layer Descriptor is an XML schema specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium for describing the appearance of map layers. It is capable of describing the rendering of vector and raster data...
- WCSWeb Coverage ServiceThe Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service Interface Standard provides an interface allowing requests for geographical coverages across the web using platform-independent calls...
- Web Coverage Service: provides coverage objectsCoverage dataIn geographic information systems, a coverage is a mapping of one aspect of data in space. It represents a "domain" in terms of characteristics expressing a range of values. For example: a satellite image derived from remote sensing might record varying degrees of light pollution...
from a specified region - WFSWeb Feature ServiceThe Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service Interface Standard provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls...
- Web Feature Service: for retrieving or altering feature descriptions - WMSWeb Map ServiceA Web Map Service is a standard protocol for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet that are generated by a map server using data from a GIS database...
- Web Map Service: provides map images - WMTS - Web Map Tile Service: provides map image tiles
- WPSWeb Processing ServiceThe OGC Web Processing Service Interface Standard provides rules for standardizing how inputs and outputs for invoking geospatial processing services, such as polygon overlay, as a Web service. The WPS standard defines how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from...
- Web Processing Service: remote processing service
The design of standards were originally built on the HTTP web services paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
for message-based interactions in web-based systems. However, in the last year the members have started working on defining a common approach for SOAP protocol and WSDL
Web Services Description Language
The Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...
bindings. Considerable progress has been made in defining Representational State Transfer
Representational State Transfer
Representational state transfer is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation...
(REST) web services.
Organization structure
The OGC has three operational units:- the Specification program
- the Interoperability Program
- Outreach and Community Adoption
Collaboration
The OGC has a close relationship with ISO/TC 211ISO/TC 211
ISO/TC 211 is a standard technical committee formed within ISO, tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information and geomatics. It is responsible for preparation of a series of International Standards and Technical Specifications numbered in the range starting at 19101...
(Geographic Information/Geomatics). Volumes from the ISO 19100 series under development by this committee progressively replace the OGC abstract specification. Further, the OGC standards Web Map Service, GML, Web Feature Service, Observations and Measurements
Observations and Measurements
Observations and Measurements is an International Standard which defines a conceptual schema encoding for observations, and for features involved in sampling when making observations...
, and Simple Features Access have become ISO standards.
The OGC works with more than 20 international standards-bodies including W3C, OASIS
OASIS (organization)
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards...
, WfMC
Workflow Management Coalition
Workflow Management Coalition is a consortium, formed to define standards for the interoperability of workflow management systems. It was founded in May 1993 as an offshoot of the Black Forest Group with original members including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, ICL, Staffware and approximately 300...
, and the IETF.
See also
- GeoToolsGeoToolsGeoTools is a free software GIS toolkit for developing standards compliant solutions.It provides an implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium specifications as they are developed...
- implements OGC standards as OGC releases them - Open Source Geospatial FoundationOpen Source Geospatial FoundationThe Open Source Geospatial Foundation , is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to...
(OSGeo) - List of geographic information systems software
- Comparison of geographic information systems software
- OpenLayersOpenLayersOpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps...
- Semantic Sensor WebSemantic Sensor WebThe Semantic Sensor Web is an approach to annotating sensor data with spatial, temporal, and thematic semantic metadata. This technique builds on current standardization efforts within the Open Geospatial Consortium Sensor Web Enablement and extends them with Semantic Web technologies to...
External links
- Open Geospatial Consortium
- OpenGIS(R) Abstract Specification by OGC
- OpenGIS(R) Specifications by OGC
- Open GPSToolKit.
- OGR - OGR library which implements relevant OGC standards (part of GDALGDALGDAL is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats...
) - ISO/TC 211
- Open Source GIS Master Index of Open Source GIS projects, many of which implement OGC standards
- ObjectFX