On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 11:26:15AM +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hello, > > I've been following the discussions on JSON etc for GEO. > > IMO: > > I'm finding that Open Source spatial projects are getting increasing > attention from large organisations. > > This is largely due to a strong support for OGC standards in key OS > projects and an organisation's desire for vendor neutrality. > > While I can sympathise with performance concerns, I'd recommend that > projects do not move away from support for OGC Standards. > > There has been a great deal of thought and effort into getting the > standards where they are today. If specific OGC standards are not working > or have problems, we as an industry need to work with OGC to make sure > that the issues are resolved.
Speaking as a developers in a browser-based mapping client -- yawn. We implemented a WFS-based interface to the MetaCarta Geographic Search engine, using OpenLayers. The reason for moving away from this was not related in any way to *performance* -- it was the fact that there was no way to retrieve data from remote hosts in a way taht did not require a sever side components. OpenLayers is an entirely clientside application. Think Google Maps API, but Open Source and designed to work with things like WMS. WHere possible, we make it possible to do everything on any machine -- localhost, or remote pages, or what have you. Depending on an XML format in a browser for that use case is simply not possible. Simpler formats have numerous benefits for ease of use, and GeoRSS is a perfect example of this: the uptake of GeoRSS has been tremendous in all kinds of fields in a way that GML never would have been. This is not due to the difference between XML and JSON, but instead due to the simplicity of GeoRSS over GML. The OGC would never have standardized something like GeoRSS. It's against the nature of a large standards body to develop something like GeoRSS. Combine the lack of simplicity in existing OGC specs with an adherence to a default serialization in a format that's hard/impossible to use in client-side applications, and is it any wonder that the new browser-led innovations are moving away from OGC specifications and XML? Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt MetaCarta _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
