[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [OSGeo-Standards] TMS and WMTS

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

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Brian,
most points taken, thank you. It seems like we are not too far apart.
See below for the one minor issue that has bothered me for some time.

Brian Russo wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 7:10 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) <seven at arnulf.us> wrote:
>> Hey,
>> sorry to spam Discuss with nerdy smalltalk. We might want to move back
>> to the standards list for follow ups.
> 
> I've moved it to standards (which I wasn't a member of.. so now I am).
> 
>> Brian Russo wrote:
>>> I have a simpler/better idea - have the OGC stop creating
>>> unnecessarily complex standards hundreds of pages long that hardly
>>> anyone implements. This will save time/money, and benefit users,
>>> proprietary and open source developers alike.
>> Yes making standards readable and usable is a great idea. It takes time
>> and brains to implement a good standard. I lack both, so not a good
>> choice. How about you? If you are good at this why don't you join the
>> OGC process and help do it better? But watch out, the OGC has a high
>> frustration potential because there is always knowledgeable folks around
>> who pick apart what you just put together. Which is why some standards
>> actually work pretty well.
> 
> Honestly I have never even considered this and I think that is a
> problem organisations like OGC face. The people actually doing this
> stuff are too busy .. actually doing stuff to write about it. So what
> happens is you get a lot of academics and industry people that develop
> these standards. Now I'm not trying to slight them - their
> perspectives are great. But they often miss out on a lot of the
> 'reality' side in terms of the real world issues we face. It's not
> even so much that they won't consider the issues, but the weighting
> may be different. So while for example to some guy with a 1 GigE dev
> lan bandwidth constraint is not an issue. Well to me running forward
> operations with an unreliable 500Kb pipe - well yeah that is a big
> concern for me. And so on..
> 
> As far as contributing, sure I'd be interested in developing
> standards. And I'm not saying it isn't hard. Doing anything right is
> usually more difficult than doing a half-assed job - that's why
> there's so much crap in the world. Frankly I'm more of a meddler which
> is why I think do pretty well in my current job.
> 
> 
>>> Sometimes I think it's a concerted effort to make sure the 'open'
>>> standards are as complex as possible so few people have the resources
>> Thank you for the laugh but you do not believe this yourself. So why say
>> it? This is exactly the tone I regret in this discussion. OGC is neither
>> a conspiracy nor are they all brain dead. I might be both, conceded, but
>> this is beside the topic.
> 
> Maybe the sarcastic tone is a bit counter-productive, but in a sense
> it is true. We talk about 'openness' and 'transparency'. But you can't
> just build it - you have to sell it. And no I don't think people are
> stupid so often as they are merely approaching issues in too much of a
> focused and not a holistic enough perspective. So if the 'product'
> here is a standard, then it's not enough to have an open standard. It
> has to also stand on its own as a good one and by the way - you have
> to sell it. Part of selling it is making sure that people can actually
> implement it and want to.
> 
> So while I appreciate Bruce's comment that nobody is forcing me to use
> open standards - sure I got that.. but it's not about who's forcing
> whom. Our standards should be so awesome that people are throwing
> themselves at us saying 'hey, how do I get your standard into my
> product? It's in such huge demand!'
> 
> 
>>> to implement them (except proprietary vendors and academics with tons
>>> of time) and the rest of us all stick with proprietary standards
>> I guess that you will be of the same opinion as me that an open standard
>> that all can use for free is better than a costly and potentially patent
>> infected proprietary standard that can be changed at the whim of its
>> singular (proprietary vendor) owner. At least I can see a difference.
> 
> Yes.
> I can certainly see a difference and in no way am I supporting
> proprietary standards. I am hugely in favour of open standards -
> because they ultimately drive open source software.
> But above all I am in favour of good standards.
> 
> And it's not so simple for various reasons (technical, cultural, etc)
> to just one day snap your fingers and transition over to everything
> being open. I am envious of people that do that but.. especially in
> government it's just not going to happen. It doesn't mean you give up
> improving things - but you can't do it all in a day.
> 
> The first step in improving business processes & information flow in
> an organisation is to reduce the number of data formats and make those
> formats more open. This is true regardless of whether you're talking
> financial documents or spreadsheets.. geospatial.. whatever.
> Ultimately that makes it possible to use open source software. People
> forget that the goal is really the information/content itself. I don't
> care about the system it 'happens' to be running on. The
> standard/format is merely a vehicle that holds my content and lets me
> share it to the world. Open formats free information. Closed ones..
> lock it up. But an overkill standard never gets implemented in the
> first place and isn't even in the running.
> 
>>> (because we have the software - the lazy solution), or simple open
>>> ones like GeoRSS-Simple (because a normal person with a normal
>>> schedule can actually understand it).
>> That is another one that should go under the hood of OSGeo, if it is to
>> become of any relevance for example to INSPIRE. If they want to use it,
>> it has to become an ISO standard, else you can't stuff it in a law.
>> Stupid, aint it?
> 
> Just looking at geodata.. the standards we use on a routine basis
> include WMS, VPF, ESRI Shapefile, ESRI 9.2/9.3 REST/SOAP services,
> KML, GeoRSS and GeoJSON. How many of those are OGC standards? Only 2
> as far as I can tell (KML/WMS). Do we have too many? Maybe. Ultimately
> it doesn't matter if my information (remember.. it's about the content
> not the container) can freely flow from 1 application/user to another.
> If I do it right the user won't even care or notice.
> 
> I appreciate people have mandates and I'm not saying don't make things
> an ISO standard - for some people that is a selling point. But the
> pursuit of a 'one size fits all' standard is a failed one. If you go
> in with the attitude that '100% of our data must fit into this
> format'. Well.. GML anyone? And oh by the way, I bet you'd still never
> get true 100% adoption. There's never an exception.. until there is.
> 
> I go in with the approach that you'll try to tackle the majority
> (maybe 80%) of your requirements with 1 or 2 solutions - and then mop
> up the rest. Excessive future-proofing and chasing the tail will kill
> things well before they come to fruition.
> 
>>> WMS has been a pretty good success even though I'm sure that'll get
>>> some snickering from the peanut gallery due to its age - it is still a
>> Ah - but a standard is good if it lasts, isn't it? Imagine having http
>> change every half year. Wouldn't that be fun? There sure would be more
>> work to do for us. HTTP 1.1 is 176 pages[1].
> 
> Oh by no means am I slighting WMS. I just thought someone might slight
> us for still using it :) WMS is a great protocol. It's simple..
> simple.. and it works! I can write a rudimentary client that grabs an
> image from a WMS server in mere minutes. Granted dealing with an image
> is much simpler than actual features.
> 
> The funny thing about WMS that I didn't mention - is that even for
> such a short format - people don't even implement all of it! When's
> the last time you saw someone using styles?
> 
>> You are right, GML sucks bad. But it is not true that it is not used.
>> The German Cadastral and Surveying Authorities of the Länder adopted GML
>> as core for the new cadastral base map format. They could only do so
>> because it is an ISO de-jure standard and can only thus become part of a
>> law. Technically it is a huge PITA. Just like cadastral bas maps are.
>> But it also makes sure that folks now don't fall off the plate when they
>> step over the border of their city boundaries, county or state. This is
>> an achievement that neither proprietary vendors nor foss hackers managed
>> in the whole cadastral IT history. The use case is just a bit different
>> than locating the next pizza palace. The cadastre maps ownership - the
>> basis of our whole economy (be it broken or not, this is what we live
>> in, on and off).
> 
> Hence why I said 'barely' used. And here's the thing.. Realistically -
> since GML is not widely adopted.. is the format 'really' open?
> In other words.. if users can't access it then who cares? Maybe
> putting it all in shapefiles would have been better!
> 
> (I'm not advocating that.. just making a point).
> 
> Now.. I do understand that sometimes you need an organisation to make
> a policy decision to force adoption. I get that, I really do. But it's
> not just an academic argument - if you have users that really need to
> get the data.. well you can't just hand them the standards document
> and tell them to write a client. Because again.. ultimately users
> don't care about formats.. they care about content. They want
> information they can use.. not data. Putting data in an inaccessible
> format - open or proprietary - is ultimately no different than locking
> the drives in a safe. If I can't use it it doesn't exist.
> 
> And of course that's the hard part.. getting from here (the
> proprietary status quo) to there (the open world of unicorn
> happiness).
> 
> 
>> KML is more interesting from the governance perspective. And I am pretty
>> happy that KML is not owned by Google any more but by the OGC because
>> the OGC is a non-profit organization dedicated to make the world
>> interoperate. When KML came out everybody was full of praise for the
>> pragmatic way of doing things. Now that it is in the OGC it sucks again?
>> Funny.
> 
> I'll honestly say that I've always disliked Google Earth from an
> organisational perspective for one simple reason.
> 
> Mission Creep.
> 
> Non-GIS users look at it and see.. maps! With stuff on it! Hey that's
> GIS right? The problem is from a enterprise standpoint is.. Google
> Earth is just a viewer. And there have been a lot of attempts to
> shoe-horn in GIS-like capabilities but ultimately it is a viewer that
> is a silo where things go in but don't really come out. I realize KML
> can exist apart from Google Earth, but we're not using it that way and
> have no plans to.. I haven't seen anyone that does. Perhaps if GML
> didn't exist then we'd start to see people using the KML syntax to do
> GIS? Who knows, that could be interesting.
> 
> So in other words, while I have no issue with KML itself,
> operationally I've only really seen it associated to GE (which I
> dislike).
> 
>> Google now has to ask a diverse bunch of spatial experts, geo
>> professionals and neo geographers if their changes to KML are worth
>> pursuing. And OGC makes sure that even you have a say in the public
>> comment period. Not bad, huh? But it gets even cooler. You could be one
>> of those diverse spatial experts, geo professionals and neo geographers
>> and join the process right from the start! If you think it sucks, then
>> you can say so right away. Why wait until many people have invested lots
>> of time and written large incomprehensible documents? You are wasting
>> other people's time by complaining *afterwards*.
> 
> Sure, point the way.
> 
> 
>> No offense taken please. Maybe I got carried away just a bit.
> 
> Not at all. I'm sure I offended some people but that's ok. I have no
> problem voicing my opinion even if it's not popular. Saying GML blows
> is probably heresy to some but it's the truth. CAP is another standard

In my perception it seems quite the opposite. For a good Open Sourcerer
it seems to be good style to belittle the achievements of the OGC and to
bash them wherever possible. It just feels a bit short sighted because
we would profit from working closer with them.

> I predict will fail. Good idea but just ultimately way too
> complicated. Someone could probably do a thesis correlating schema
> length to failure rate for XML and similar document formats.
> 
> 
>  - bri

Good idea, I'll propose that to the next sociology student who asks me
for a PHD thesis...


Regards,
Arnulf

- --
Arnulf Christl

Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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