[OSGeo-Standards] JSON in OGC standards

Volker Mische volker.mische at gmail.com
Tue Jul 24 02:57:18 PDT 2012


Hi all,

I've just discovered that the upcoming GeoServices REST API [1] standard
doesn't make use of GeoJSON, but has it's own JSON format for geometries.

I'm well aware that GeoJSON is not an OGC standard, but no one can argue
that it's not widely used. The objective of the GeoServices REST API is
to be backwards compatible to the ESRI implementation. This of course
makes sense for ESRI, but is it really what the OGC wants/is about?

Does the OGC really want to have a standard with JSON encoded geometries
which are not compatible to an already existing specification?

"Widely used" is hard to put into numbers, but I think it this case, we
could just count how many GeoJSON parsers out there, and how many
GeoServices REST API JSON encoded geometry parsers are out there.

Would it make sense to file an official change request? Or is it not
worth the hassle as it would be taken down immediately, as it is a
backwards incompatible change?

[1] http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/89

Cheers,
  Volker


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