[OSGeo-Standards] Goals of using OWS Context Documents

[Jody Garnett]

Lorenzo Becchi wrote:
> I guess I have to apologize again for my poor English and probably for 
> my poor OGC knowledge. anyway...
Don't bother apologizing; part of why we are on a mailing list so people 
that were there when it happened (or are off on a private OGC wiki) can 
help facilitate.
>> One thing I liked about a lot of the OGC specs is their respect for 
>> "vendor specific extentions"; the idea is to create a schema with a 
>> well known place for people to dump in additional content; after a 
>> while (if the need is common enough) you can promote the solution to 
>> a first class element in your schema.
> ok Jody, I possibly see the point. Tom example helped too.
>
> my ideas is basically this:
> To me OWS Context could be the Open Format that anybody is looking for 
> to define map structures.
You are correct; we all have the same idea.
>   I mean: why should we deal with Mapfile, GeoServer configuration, 
> OpenLayers configuration, uDig format (I guess you have one), QGIS 
> format, gvSIG format, and all proprietary vendors formats when we can 
> probably do everything with an OWS Context?
Indeed; the other approach is lots of little conversion programs :-( 
There is a difference between configuration in the MapServer and 
GeoServer sense; and a context document for use in visualization 
programs. I saw what deegree did to WMS Context documents and it was 
horrible.

You are correct; we do have one point of difficulty:
- OWS Context ==> Open Web Context; ie a context document for combining 
"Open Web Services" into a visual map. The OGC has the concept of an 
Open Web Service defined with a capabilities document etc, similar in 
spirit to WSDL or Corbra object request broker...
- And what we want is an "Open Context Document"

As long as we are clear on the different, and don't care, we can start 
off adding additional stuff into OWS Context. It is after all a good 
place to start.
> If we accept this point of view even OGC AbstractResourceTypes should 
> be Extensions.
Fair enough; for the onces that have hit a formal release with a version 
number it is nice if we have them represent themselves in a context 
document. Actually I would love to see the Open Web Service template 
document expanded so that people writing new services remember to 
contribute an Extention to OWS Context.
> what happens when you export your map with local file-system links in?
Now we are into specifics; I will follow with a separate subject line so 
the email thread does not get confused.
Jody