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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | Re: GISList: Interior e-gov tack irks GIS vendors (Geospatial One-Stop
initiative) |
| Date: |
04/23/2003 03:50:00 PM |
| From: |
Peter Baumann |
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Anthony Quartararo wrote:
> I get the sense that OGC is less about interoperability and more about
> making room for smaller vendors to bring their products to market in a
> hostile environment. If that's even remotely true, more power to OGC, but
> lose the cloak. Competition is good, great even, but don't disguise it
> under a different banner. If I am wrong, then, I'm wrong,
This mail of mine represented my particular view on the case, and I stressed
just one particular goodie. Increased competition I see as a follow-up effect -
with its obvious benefits - once interoperability is there. Still I am techie
enough :-) to enjoy sound, interoperable componentware.
BTW, looking at the OGC membership structure (as has been discussed earlier) you
wouldn't exactly get the impression that smaller vendors dominate. Nonetheless
they make visible contributions.
> Management (and thereby decision-making) by committee/consensus is almost
> never a good idea. The last place this would be successful is in the
> Government sector.
Hard to disagree. Here I like OGC's approach of doing testbeds before freezing
concepts as standards: that gets you back to ground. Aside from that, "democracy
is the worst form of government, aside of all the others" [hope I re-translated
Churchill properly] - what choice do we have?
> Backtracking just a bit, isn't the whole purpose of OGC and the
> interoperability buzz solely for the purpose of WWW applications? Am I
> missing something, isn't the rest of the industry still doing business the
> old fashion way, in a client/server LAN ? Will OGC help me if I work in an
> environment that has various client machines running ArcGIS, GeoMedia,
> AutoCAD Map, etc. etc. from a server(s) connected to another RDBMS for
> stuff, and yet another RDMS for imagery stuff, and so on and so on..that we
> find in a typical office environment. These scenarios usually do not need
> to access the WWW for anything related to GIS work, but still the need to
> convert, transform and otherwise integrate various proprietary formats
> happens every day. Is OGC going to solve this "interoperability" challenge
> too ?
I think that WWW technology indeed will form the basis for LAN apps in future
too - just like Internet technology does already with TCP/IP. Actually I think
that standards apply to your scenario too. Referring to your RDBMS example:
while the SQLs in practice are far from being uniform, they do allow for a host
of applications to rely on them. ODBC/JDBC gives you access to your PC-based
MS-Access as well as the DB2 mainframe database. (Whereas we database guys by
far haven't solved all the pitfalls either, to be honest.)
> > -----Original Message-----
>
> > Sure it is. Standards take incredibly much longer to
> > establish than anyone would consider reasonable from a
> > technical point of view. There is such a wealth of
> > influences, ranging from science to politics to commerce (in
> > what order?). Not to speak of conceptual disputes in cases
> > where no single generally accepted way has been established
> > yet. However, once these standards are settled they are not
> > just valuable, but so common sense that you simply don't
> > realize them any longer. Screws, disks, PCs, protocols, data
> > exchange formats... how long did it take from the first
> > graphics file stumbling into the Internet until GeoTIFF
> > became standard? Would you consider JPEG2000 being worth pursuing it?
>
> So, shouldn't there be a competing, alternative standards organization to
> challenge OGC for standards superiority ?
Interesting idea. But how would standards be judged? Technical quality, market
penetration (Microsoft...), number of implementations, ...? And wouldn't the
immediately next step be to demand harmonisation (see OGC vs. TC211),
righteously?
Cheers,
Peter
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Anthony
>
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--
Dr. Peter Baumann
WWW: http://www.rasdaman.com/
Email: mailto:baumann@rasdaman.com
Dialup: voice +49-89-67000146, fax +49-89-67000147, mobile +49-173-5837882
"A brilliant idea is a job halfdone."
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