[Inspire-data] State of INSPIRE with FOSS (long)

[Milo van der Linden]

One addition:

Pitney Bowes MapInfo (In my opinion a large commercial player) is also
busy implementing various parts of INSPIRE:

http://benelux.pbbiblogs.com/tag/inspire/

A presentation about their view can be found here:
http://www.geovisualisatie.nl/Conferences/MapInfoUpdateSessie2010/INSPIRE_MIM.pdf

2011/4/21 Just van den Broecke <just at justobjects.nl>:
> Hi,
>
> This mail (sorry for cross-posting) is to provoke some thinking with regards
> to INSPIRE with FOSS, its products, the INSPIRE timeschedule and the
> competition with proprietary INSPIRE solutions. Also since I have no
> immediate answers I am seeking some wisdom from you clever FOSS folks.
>
> The issues below are somewhat colored for the Dutch situation, the questions
> I get, and focus on Download and View Services (viz WFS/WMS). Metadata/CSW
> for INSPIRE through GeoNetwork is in quite good shape IMO.
>
> - FOSS products: deegree v3, GeoServer (GS) and recently MapServer are all
> providing INSPIRE extensions. These are however in various stages of
> development and priorities (e.g. GS WMS first and deegree WFS first), using
> very different architectures (deegree Blob storage upcoming hybrid, GS
> on-the-fly relational mapping) and different focus.
> I think this diversity is good (where is Python?) but the situation is
> currently that neither is INSPIRE-ready for both WMS (1.3) and WFS (2.0?)
> with GML 3.2.1.
>
> - INSPIRE timeline: Discovery (CSW) and View (WMS) services (Annex I) have
> to be operational by november 2011, Download (and Transformation) Services
> (WFS) by dec 2012. See also
> http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/44
>
> - Proprietary solutions: apart from some smaller vendors like Snowflake, and
> larger ones for FME, also ESRI has entered the INSPIRE market. ESRI's
> solution is provided by the German firm Conterra:
> http://www.conterra.de/en/products/esri-software/afi.shtm
> As usual, dressing is sharp, brochures glossy and maybe their solution
> actually works.
>
> - FOSS success: in the past two years National Mapping and Cadastral
> Agencies (NMCA's) have been prototyping/testing various FOSS and Proprietary
> solutions and architectures, mainly for the entire "INSPIRE chain", i.e.
> Transformation (ETL), services (WMS/WFS/CSW). Like for example within ESDIN
> (www.esdin.eu) where the focus was on Transformation and WFS, about 13 out
> 15 NMCAs finally used FOSS tools like PostGIS, GDAL, deegree3 because these
> actually worked.
> See also http://2010.foss4g.org/presentations_show.php?id=3416 ;-)
>
> - More FOSS success: Planetek with lat/lon (deegree) have been chosen to
> build the European INSPIRE Geoportal. See
> http://www.planetek.it/eng/projects/inspire_geoportal and GeoServer is/has
> contracts with various NMCAs (UK OS and IGN FR?) to develop INSPIRE
> extensions.
>
> - The problem: currently the situation has come that NMCAs are actually
> choosing "an INSPIRE solution" and the ESRI's of this world are entering the
> game at the same time. The smart NMCAs like IGN and OS may just acknowledge
> that FOSS will bring them long term benefits. The problem IMHO at this
> moment is that there is no complete "FOSS INSPIRE Stack". For example, the
> solution used in the inspire-foss project
> (http://code.google.com/p/inspire-foss/) with
> GDAL/XSLT/PostGIS/deegree3/GeoExt lacks a compliant WMS 1.3. GeoServer is
> also still not there for INSPIRE WMS 1.3 and lacks a robust WFS/data mapping
> solution (and as a warning to GS-devs, getting this right, INSPIRE-compliant
> and performant is much much harder than you think). Diversity is good, but
> for the NMCAs to which I have been presenting the situation is unclear.
> Maybe we are too honest in the FOSS world as many proprietary products may
> not be ready either.
>
> - The way out: the inspire-foss project has always been geared on multiple
> INSPIRE solutions, e.g. not just deegree-only, though this is still a very
> strong solution for ETL+fast WFS serving. As said, part of this mail is to
> clarify what I think is the current situation but also to possibly get ideas
> from you. Others may think that INSPIRE is just a nasty heavy beast designed
> top-down without any rational software engineering constraints and will just
> fade away as so many all-encompassing standards' frameworks that had no
> prior proven implementation (remember the ISO 7-Layer OSI stack?). We may
> find INSPIRE back in another format (OSM?). Basically this mail comes back
> to what Jeroen Ticheler, Arnulf, Jo Walsh and others had already formulated
> 2/3 years ago:
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/INSPIRE and
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/INSPIRE_data_experiments
>
> I think we have come a long way since then and have proven/diverse INSPIRE
> FOSS solutions though in various stages. I realize I have maybe been too
> much focused on technique/software, loosing the bigger picture, and that we
> need to have something more integrated both in organization (OSGeo?) and in
> the software ("INSPIRE Stack" with component options). If you got as far as
> here thanks for reading !
>
> best regards,
>
> --Just
>
> Just van den Broecke
> The Netherlands
> www.justobjects.nl
>
>
>
>
>
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