Hello,
Unfortunately the piece in the OSGeo Journal, vol 11, on 'Simple
Features' is promulgating a common misconception.
It turns out that 'Simple Features' are *not* constrained to have a flat
table of attributes. 'Simple Features' are only restricted to have a
single geometry which must be 'simple.' The attributes may be
arbitrarily nested and may be in different namespaces. Also the 'simple'
geometry, which traditionally included only elements in 2D with linearly
interpolated arcs (points, lines, polygons) are now being expanded to
more forms and possibly more dimensions. So it turns out that 'Simple
Features,' as discussed in the standards group, are not so simple.
We do need a term to talk about the kinds of features discussed in the
article. The best I have discovered is 'Flat Feature' which implies:
1) no explicit discussion of temporality
2) a single spatial definition, which must be 2D and only use
linear interpolation
3) have a 'flat' table of other attributes, that is that attributes
are not nested in each other.
The 'flat' in the name refers both to the geometry and to the form of
the attributes, which could form a single row in a table.
cheers,
~adrian
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
