[tdwg-tapir] OGC standards and TAPIR

Tue Nov 29 15:51:18 CET 2005

Hi,
some stupid question regarding WFS. Does all feature data in WFS need to be geo referenced? If so, then this is probably the biggest drawback as taxon data usually isnt and even a lot of our observations or specimens arent at least not properly referenced. But I guess you can share purely non geographic information as well?

Markus

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: tdwg-tapir-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tapir-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] Im Auftrag von Javier privat
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. November 2005 15:00
An: tdwg-tapir at lists.tdwg.org
Betreff: Re: [tdwg-tapir] OGC standards and TAPIR

Hi all,

Do not misunderstand me. I did not want to mean that it could be a good idea to join the OGC and use their standards.
I am in a parallel discussion with someone from the OGC community and I wanted to have some arguments...

In projects like Geoserver and in deegree (open source implementations of WFS) they have to deal with the same problems we have of mapping relational databases to user schemas (that is GML application schemas for them). It would be great to be able to share code and ideas with them, but I know this may be more work than not contact at all... They have already some OS libraries, like Geotools, for dealing with OGC protocols, in the same way we are going to create libraries for TAPIR.
Being involved in bigger communities like this one could benefit us, right now there is no one apart of us interested in our software. But again I am not sure if this would not actually mean more work and less flexibility... and in any case we are probably too deep in our things to consider something like this, so I do not want to open this discussion and better concentrate in finishing what we have.

Just for your knowledge I have to say that I think we are more advance than Geoserver, at least, in solving the mapping problem :) Just for you to feel better jeje.

Javier.

On 28/11/2005, at 17:47, Roger Hyam wrote:

> Before we jump in bed with GML (which I have been in favour of in the 
> past) it is worth looking at the other side.
>
> This is an interesting article/opinion on GML:
>
> http://www.mapbureau.com/gml/
>
> And somewhere down this page is a blog by a guy talking to Ron Lake 
> about getting RDF stuff in GML or visa versa which makes good reading.
>
> http://danbri.org/words/category/general/
>
> If we think about integration of technologies then it seems to me that 
> we want to be able to plug into as many other domains as possible. If 
> some one wants to pass information around about people or buildings or 
> DNA  along side herbarium specimen data then we should not make up a 
> schema for it the user should be able to use any of a whole bunch of 
> widely acceptable, cross domain ontologies/ vocabularies. They should 
> pick the one most suitable to them.
>
> If we go with pure GML then we may end up having to invent or port 
> things to it that aren't of interest to the geographic community.
> GML may be a bunch of cartographers trying to invent their own 
> semantic web. GML applications may be nearly as far away from plugging 
> in to "everything else" as we are.
>
> So maybe a one night stand or an open marriage but not total 
> commitment unless we can see a path to more generic W3C standards - is 
> what I'm thinking at the moment.
>
> All the best,
>
> Roger
>
>
> Javier de la Torre wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am still sending emails with these guys working with OGC standards  
>> and some times I have difficulties to explain why we are not using  
>> WFS for sharing our data. I check at the report from Renato and  
>> Markus and did not find explicit reasons, but I will try to put mines  
>> and please let me know if you find other reasons why do you think WFS  
>> is not the way to go... For sure I do not mean WFS as it is right  
>> now, but extending WFS to meet our needs.
>>
>> -OGC is a big consortium and it would be difficult to get our needs  
>> inserted in the standards. So if no one is going to worry about how  
>> we extend why should we worry about  following them.
>>
>> -With WFS we would have to adapt our schemas to GML application   
>> schemas (that is substitution groups and we have to extend   
>> AbstractFeautureType). We would not like to have to change our   
>> standards described in XML schemas.
>>
>> -Standards like SDD can not make use of GML, mainly because WFS is a  
>> service for retrieving features of one single thing and not the  
>> relations between them.
>>
>> Do you agree with that or you want to add more reasons?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Javier.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-tapir mailing list
>> tdwg-tapir at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tapir_lists.tdwg.org
>>
>>
>
> --
>
> -------------------------------------
> Roger Hyam
> Technical Architect
> Taxonomic Databases Working Group
> -------------------------------------
> http://www.tdwg.org
> roger at tdwg.org
> +44 1578 722782
> -------------------------------------
>

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