[OSGeo-Standards] Re: Metadata Standards and ISO 19139

[Arnulf Christl]

Scott Schwab wrote:
> The corporation I work for has had a few contracts with the US 
> government, and over the last couple of years these customers have been 
> asking for ISO19115/19139 metadata, replacing the request for FGDC.  The 
> code to generate the ISO 19139 documents is more complicated and the 
> generated output is much more verbose, compared to FGDC.  The ISO output 
> is large enough that you really need a tool like CatMDEdit to qc the output.
> 
> I have wondered if the customers are just saying they want the ISO 19115 
> format, not because of a need but just because an international standard 
> sounds better in contract negotiations,
> 
> And just for a bit of clarification, the ISO 19115 is an international 
> standard (140 pages), but it does not specify what the XML tags should 
> really look like.  To produce XML, you need the ISO 19139 technical 
> specification (112 pages). To my knowledge neither document is free.
> 
> S

Remember that the "O" in OGC stands for Open[1]. Whatever ISO standard 
is part of an OGC standard means that relevant information is available 
royalty free on OGC websites (as it is stated in the OGC bylaws). For 
example here: http://schemas.opengis.net/iso/19139/

This is one of reasons that they put up with the oftentimes onerous task 
of running specs through TC 211. Thanks OGC folks.

Regards,

[1] which are remnants of the Open Source background of OGC which they 
take very serious.