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

[Allan Doyle]

On Nov 23, 2009, at 11:46 AM, Arnulf Christl wrote:

> 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.
>

This is not entirely true. Take a look at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/as 
  and see "Topic 1 - Feature Geometry" (it says to go ISO). Also  
"Topic 11 - Metadata" (clicking on it brings you to ISO).


	Allan