On 12/03/10 13:47, Howard Butler wrote: > On Mar 12, 2010, at 6:31 AM, Mike Grant wrote: >> - GDAL's XML format for describing data (see the fields section) > > Heh, VRT's actually my counter-example. It's home-grown, it doesn't have a > schema to validate against, it can't live in a namespace, and it makes up its > own names for everything. > >> - CF Conventions for netCDF data (bitfields section) > > ooh, I hate netCDF's approach :)
Guess that's some ideas on what to avoid then ;) >> On a vaguely related note, it'd be nice to have a VLR XML (ISO) that >> described the dataset for archival and metadata purposes. > > Have an example? I don't have a sample lidar one to hand, so wandered over to http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home and searched for "lidar". I got something "The Direct Observations of Large Aerosol Radiative Forcing in the Himalayan Region" - if you open up the metadata popdown, you can see a pretty-printed version of the XML you can get by clicking the document icon ("save as xml"). A direct link to that xml is: http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/iso19139.xml?id=34218 The whole ISO 19139 (19115) thing is pretty complicated but it seems to be the way things are moving for metadata - it's mandated in Europe (INSPIRE directive) and the Federal Geographic Data Committee seem to have picked it up too: http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-standards#isometadata A high level mention of similar standards: http://marinemetadata.org/guides/mdatastandards/comstds (DIF is super easy if you want simpler) The reason we're interested in it long term is that we're supposed to provide proper metadata when archiving data to a centralised UK data repository. We can do this as a separate file, but it'd be ultimately nicer (and safer) if the metadata is embedded into a single self-describing file, like netCDF does for model and satellite data. It may be something for a prospective LAS 1.4 group to discuss, but an optional XML VLR for dataset description sounds sensible, and ISO-compatible XML seems the most obvious choice. Cheers, Mike. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plymouth Marine Laboratory Registered Office: Prospect Place The Hoe Plymouth PL1 3DH Website: www.pml.ac.uk Registered Charity No. 1091222 PML is a company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales company number 4178503 PML is a member of the Plymouth Marine Sciences Partnership Website: www.pmsp.org.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail, its content and any file attachments are confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error please do not copy, disclose it to any third party or use the contents or attachments in any way. Please notify the sender by replying to this e-mail or e-mail [email protected] and then delete the email without making any copies or using it in any other way. The content of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Plymouth Marine Laboratory unless specifically stated. You are reminded that e-mail communications are not secure and may contain viruses. Plymouth Marine Laboratory accepts no liability for any loss or damage which may be caused by viruses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Liblas-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/liblas-devel
