[OSGeo-Standards] RE: Your posting WRT XLink and the OGC position

[Carl Reed]

Steko -

The OGC Members did not take the XLink decision lightly. There was considerable discussion that started in the GML Standard Working Group in mid-2011. The GML SWG brought the issue to the OGC Architecture Board. The OAB discussed and investigated the issue. Their guidance was for the OGC Members to consider moving from the OGC XLink schema to the W3C XLink 1.1 schema. The OGC Members discussed the issue during the OGC Brussels Technical Committee face to face meetings. During that time, a variety of informational emails were sent to the OGC Members so that they would have the information necessary to make an informed decision. At the Brussels meeting, the Members by a formal motion and vote agreed to the requirement to migrate from the OGC XLink 1.0 schema to the W3C XLink 1.1 schema. The entire decision process was within the OGC consensus decision framework as defined in our Policies and Procedures – which by the way are very similar to the W3C, OASIS, and the IETF. I know – I work standards in all three of those SDOs.

In my various emails and in my blog postings, I thought I was very clear regarding the background and the reasons for this change. Please read http://www.opengeospatial.org/blog/1597 again. If you do not understand the background requirements and reasons for the move to XLink 1.1, please let me know. 

As to the disruptive nature, of course we are very aware of that this change has numerous implications for the implementation community. We also understand your suggestion regarding issuing a new version of the affected standards. The problem is that we would have all the older versions of the existing standards using OGC XLink 1.0 schema and the new version using W3C XLink 1.1 schema. This inconsistency would cause many more (aggravating) problems then revising all the existing OGC standards “in place” with the new W3C XLink schema reference. This is due to how schemas are processed by applications and how schemas may be cached. This is not my area of expertise and if you would like more details on the technical implications of the approach you suggested,  I will be happy to forward your suggestions and concerns to the OGC Architecture Board.

As to the timeline, this is being driven more by government procurement requirements than by OGC Member requirements. Further, public blogs and other informational posting have been our there for months. http://www.spatineo.com/2012/01/ogc-w3c-xlink-transition-a-potential-validity-breaker/ for example.

Finally, we knew outreach was required many months ago but we did not have an approved timeline and technical approach until the final discussions and Member approval of the approach at the March 2012 OGC Austin meetings.

Hope this information is useful.

Regards

Carl Reed, PhD
CTO and Executive Director Standards Program
Open Geospatial Consortium
www.opengeospatial.org

The OGC: Making Location Count!

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