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| Subject: | Re: GISList: OGC and Standards, - a response |
| Date: |
01/07/2003 11:20:54 AM |
| From: |
Ron Lake |
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Hi.
I have read your "essay" and I think you are being more than a little strident.
There is little in much of what you say that ANYONE in OGC would debate -
comments like
"Even the fastest Internet connection is thousands of times too slow to support
such sophisticated user interfaces. Remember that a processor - RAM connection
is like a bullet to a walk when compared to a hard disk, and the hard disk is
like a walk to a slow snail compared to Internet. Folks who make the technical
mistake of thinking that Internet can support the same user interfaces as a
processor - RAM connection are making as dumb a suggestion as it would be to
suggest that as snail could play on a World Cup soccer team. Actually, it's
worse than that. They are suggesting a snail can keep pace with a fast rifle
bullet. "
or
"At Manifold we believe that a cool user interface written by experts that takes
maximum advantage of "in the box" power will always far outperform a GIS over
Internet solution written by equally smart experts. For serious GIS work the
best user interfaces and the fastest, largest and most sophisticated spatial
work will happen within your local workstation.
Web interfaces are fine for casual use to serve up "pay per views" and other
visual summaries of GIS work done in the box. Internet is fine for such things
and is a good way to provide reports and pictures of one's work to a worldwide
audience. That's why we have web services within Manifold: for such uses it's a
great idea."
Will not get much in the way of objection at the OGC - some might go further in
terms of what will happen with Web Services - but you state the current state of
art fairly accurately. You seem to be attacking phantoms of your own creation!
So what is the beef ?
Ron
Since no one in the OGC IS claiming to do GIS across the Internet as you suggest
I am not sure why you are attacking the OGC at all.
Dimitri Rotow wrote:
> >
> > After reading through all the posts, I am dismayed that this
> > discussion has
> > deteriorated to a debate about data formats instead of exploring
> > the issues
> > that started this thread.
>
> If I remember correctly, the issues that started this thread revolved around
> an assertion that the practical effect of OGC is to codify obsolete
> approaches to GIS to protect the obsolete product technologies of legacy
> vendors, while also playing a supporting role in codifying an architectural
> approach favored by institutional members who do not really want to release
> their public GIS holdings into the hands of the public.
>
> The discussion of GML format I believe is not really about the GML format
> but exploring a specific example case of how OGC specs end up being deformed
> and standing in the way of modern GIS. It's a typical OGC "carrier pigeon"
> technology that by it's very nature prevents a rapid and effective modern
> techonology.
>
> >
> > In my opinion as a former sponsor and current vendor, OGC's current thrust
> > in in distributed geoprocessing via the Interoperability Program is not
> > about "the average GIS user." In fact the "average GIS user" is
> > a miniscule
> > part of the folks that use spatial data on a daily basis. OGC is about
> > making geospatial processing available to everyone, not just technical
> > specialists with desktop systems.
> >
>
> Well, I appreciate your candor. Now, if OGC was honest as you are about
> their objectives they would make it clear on their website that those of use
> who are technical specialists with desktop systems are *not* the
> constituency served by OGC and that OGC will happily craft specs that reduce
> our quality of life in favor of chasing the rainbow of "making geospatial
> processing available to everyone." That would save us technical specialists
> with desktop systems from wasting any time thinking that OGC specs are
> something we would want to get involved with.
>
> The idea of "making geospatial processing available to everyone" involves a
> number of least-common-denominator constraints. In the real world, a
> utopian approach of crafting an architecture that thinks it can provide
> geospatial processing to everyone will result in compromises that prevent
> the high-performance desktop from being all it can be.
>
> Technically, there is really a choice: either you design for a high
> performance, interactive, modern desktop or you design for an arms-length,
> low-performance web interface. But, you cannot optimize both. There are
> people who say you can use the same interfaces within a high performance
> desktop that can also serve the low-performance solution. It's true that
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