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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: GISList: Cartography and Data Viewer |
| Date: |
08/25/2003 07:25:01 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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>
> However, if you feel that setting up the same data that everyone
> has set up
> a million times over and over again is a waste of time then look into OGC
> interfaces. For example the USGS is the data producer and steward of many
> spatial data products, however instead of distributing only
> files, the data
> is distributed through a web service that only provides the
> current data you
Lucky for most GIS users the USGS continues to distribute files. Well, at
least those that it has not privatized by giving them away to private
parties.
> want when you want it. This saves you the time of searching, downloading,
> unzipping, converting, formatting, projecting, loading, serving
> up the data,
> and maintaining it. The flab in desktop gis is the 80% of your
> budget spent
> on processing the same data that other organizations have already done.
>
If it is good data, it doesn't need much processing. If it is bad data, it
will need processing whether or not you fetch it from a web service or from
a file. Likewise for projections, etc. People find it convenient to fetch
data in files because it is so much faster, more reliable and more flexible
than getting it from a web service. There is no need to invent slow and
inefficient OGC things to prevent people from having access to data.
Last week's events show how unreliable web services are under the stress of
even a single virus. This will get much worse before it gets better. Even
in the best of times, web access is unthinkably slow compared to simply
opening a file on one's own machine. Given the absurdly low cost
(essentially, free) of disk, it makes sense to grab all the data you might
want from USGS so you can have the data on hand to do what you want with it
when you want. Why be dependent upon USGS? You never know, after all, when
USGS will decide to change the service, to make it unavailable, to start
charging for it, to give it away to a private company or if it will just
simply be too slow to use when you need it.
The idea of web services that just give you only that part of the data you
"need" is just another webstacle to keep you from having access to *all* the
data you might want. Don't buy into that, or the next thing you know you
won't have access to all the data when you need it.
Cheers,
Dimitri
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