[tdwg-tapir] OGC standards and TAPIR

Tue Nov 29 15:30:14 CET 2005

Javier,

I wasn't meaning to suggest not cooperating with OGC based technologies, 
sharing code/applications etc - this would all be great. My comments 
were more high level about how we represent  our knowledge domain and 
that we shouldn't compromise on interoperability. If we were to re-tool 
our standards then I am not convinced at the moment (though the jury is 
still out) that we should re-tool them to GML.

All the best,

Roger

Javier de la Torre wrote:
> 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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>
>   

-- 

-------------------------------------
 Roger Hyam
 Technical Architect
 Taxonomic Databases Working Group
-------------------------------------
 http://www.tdwg.org
 roger at tdwg.org
 +44 1578 722782
-------------------------------------

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