[OSGeo-Standards] Re: [Aust-NZ] ESRI/Google indexing spatial data.Where is OGC?

[jo at frot.org]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 08:41:18AM -0600, Carl Reed wrote:
>    Being able to search the web for KML files is a good thing. However, this
>    capability is only one piece of the solution to solving the discovery
>    issues related to broader and more effective use of geospatial content on
>    the geoweb.

>    In addition to the issues that you and others have identified, I also have
>    a concern that there are multiple spatial indexing activities by
>    individuals, companies, and even by standards organizations that are
>    totally disjoint and not coordinated in any manner. 

Well, through prototyping efforts one discovers that the "standard"
models for "rich" metadata don't provide a good fit for a lot of
real-world data, that idealised query interfaces overlook storage
problems, that there are many approaches to all kinds of different
classes of geodata. This seems a good time for wild experimentation.

Cameron, your call for "standards" for web-based spatial data search 
would be well-placed if there were any available that had proven their
worth, but I don't see that there is anything of proven worth yet -
it is too early to tell which approaches are going to work.
This does *not* seem like a problem that is proving tractable to
upfront formalisation. I have *not* been able to persuade anyone to
change their approach just through discussion. The OGC recommendations 
with CSW and the ISO standards for data and service metadata haven't 
demonstrated much widespread use or technical success yet.
What's changing?

cheers,


jo
--