[MetaCRS] Introduction

[Rutger Bezema]

Hi list, 

After I've gotten an invitation from Landon to join this list, I would like to
introduce myself, my name is Rutger Bezema, I am a software developer for the
deegree project. I am the one responsible for (re)designing the complete spatial
reference system package in deegree. 

deegree is a Java framework offering the main building blocks for Spatial Data
Infrastructures (SDIs). Its entire architecture is developed using standards of
the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO Technical Committee 211 Geographic
information / Geoinformatics (ISO/TC 211). The deegree framework
encompasses OGC Web Services as well as clients. It is Free Software
protected by the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL) and is accessible
at http://www.deegree.org.

The deegree framework already had a spatial reference package written by Martin
Desruisseaux (now developing for geotools).  Because of the fact that no one was
maintaining this code, it was very out of date, and didn't fulfill current
requirements. That is why the PSC of deegree assigned me with the task to
rewrite the complete package to the current needs of the deegree framework. 

These basic design goals were following, the crs package should be
 -- easy to use,
 -- easy to maintain,
 -- fairly easy extendable with regard to user defined projections, transformations and components
 -- configurable with respect to the definitions of projection and transformation parameters, preferably supporting different formats
 -- independend of the rest of the deegree framework.

When I first started with map projections and crs transformations, I didn't have
much expererience with them. The only examples I had, were the proj4 lib (what
else :-) ) the Snyder manual, the internet and of course the old deegree code,
which were all very helpful in making implementation decisions.

After a few months of implementation the above design goals were reached and the
deegree crs package is now able to do most of the common projections and
transformations, as well as supporting different parameter formats. The deegree
crs package is certainly not as mature/complex as the proj4 lib, and may currently
not support as many different components as the geotools api allows for, but it
is easily extendable and very easy to use and configure.

The default implementation uses a newly designed configuration format based on
an xml-basis, which allows the reusage of already defined components like
ellipsoids, primemeridans toWGS84 parameters, datums etc. The configuration can
also be easily adapted to some users own definitions. Although many formats
exist already (see the previous thread on this list) we created our own format
because we found not a single one which covered all of our needs. A schema can
be found at the deegree svn base repository at /wald.deegree.intevation.org/.

with kind regards,
Rutger Bezema

-- 
l a t / l o n  GmbH
Aennchenstrasse 19           53177 Bonn, Germany
phone ++49 +228 184960       fax ++49 +228 1849629
http://www.lat-lon.de        http://www.deegree.org

-------------------------------------------------------
On June 17 is deegree day - Am 17. Juni ist deegree day
              http://deegree.org/deegreeday
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