Does OGC develop open data formats? What is GML?
In the not so distant past, it was important to know whether your data was in a particular vendor’s (published or unpublished) format, such as SHAPE or DXF or in an open government format such as TIGER or VPF, or in an exchange format such as SDTS or SAIF. Now, format is not a major issue when vendors’ systems communicate through open interfaces. People sometimes want to archive whole data sets in the format native to the software they are using, or in an exchange format, but bulk conversion of data files from one format to another is becoming less and less necessary. The new world of ‘open’ enables conversion “on the fly” when the data are needed, “invisibly” to the user. This not only avoids the enormous investment in converting data that may never be used afterwards, but it makes it easy to provide or find up-to-date data as well. Ironically, the Web provides justification for something like a universal open format: Virtually all Web browsers now include software to process text enc
In the not so distant past, it was important to know whether your data was in a particular vendor’s (published or unpublished) format, such as SHAPE or DXF or in an open government format such as TIGER or VPF, or in an exchange format such as SDTS or SAIF. Now, format is not a major issue when vendors’ systems communicate through open interfaces. People sometimes want to archive whole data sets in the format native to the software they are using, or in an exchange format, but bulk conversion of data files from one format to another is becoming less and less necessary. The new world of ‘open’ enables conversion “on the fly” when the data are needed, “invisibly” to the user. This not only avoids the enormous investment in converting data that may never be used afterwards, but it makes it easy to provide or find up-to-date data as well.
