OGD Standard
From BluWiki
The OGD (Open Geospatial Database) Standard defines a format for the storage of geospatial information in a container that facilitates data sharing and object-oriented programming. We hope that it will become the favorite way to transfer a cohesive or comprehensive set of geospatial data between desktop GIS systems.
The OGD standard will specify an API that can be implemented in different programming languages. It will allow for the storage of spatial features, non-spatial features, geometries, topology and will support services like spatial indexing and spatial queries.
The OGD implementation will be developed in conjuntion with real world application. This real world application will be part of the OpenJUMP-Ex Project, which will use a Java implementation of the OGD as its primary data store. This implementation will utilize the Polaris Geometry Framework and LocusXML for its internal, persistent storage. This will allow OGD implementations in any programming language with XML support.
The OGD Standard is being developed to address the following problems with the current formats used to store Geospatial data:
- ESRI Shapefiles have a published specification, and are the de facto standard for sharing geospatial data. However, the format is governed by a commercial company, and is very limited in the type of data that it can store.
- GML is complicated, and lacks freely avaible documentation and example implementations that would assist in its adoption. Memebership in the OGC, the organization that governs GML, is limited and not open to many open source projects.
- ESRI's personal geodatabase overcomes some of the limitations of the Shapefile, but it is not based on an open standard and lacks support from the opensource community.
- PostGIS provides a way to store geospatial data in PostgreSQL databases. However, PostgreSQL is a beast all on its own, the geometry model that PostGIS supports is limited, and PostgreSQL is a relational database solution to an object-oriented problem.
To learn more about the OGD implementation of the OGD, visit the OpenJUMP-EX OGD Development page.
To read our first draft of the standard, visit the OGD Draft Standard Page.
