The Open GIS Consortium has released a new version of its Geography Markup Language (GML). GML defines features and syntax needed to encode geographic information in XML. The encoding enables transport and storage of geographic information, including both properties and geometry of geographic features. GML members hail from the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. GML 2.0 has already ‘met with acceptance’ from commercial and government organizations. The UK Ordnance Survey has adopted the standard and the Netherlands Society for Earth Observation and Geo-informatics (KvAG) have organized a “GML Relay” in June to explore the movement of GML data through several vendor’s software implementations.
Shell
A significant new member of the OGC is Shell International E&P. Shell estimates that around 80% of all data transactions in the upstream oil and gas business involve the location component of that data, making geospatial data the most frequently used data category in this business sector. Shell further views software integration as a means to increase effectiveness and efficiency of business processes. Shell is cooperating with OGC and its members to achieve the OGC vision of “complete integration of geoprocessing into mainstream computing.” Shell has joined OGC as a principal member to influence and accelerate the development of the geoprocessing specifications it sees as necessary, and to encourage software companies to implement these specifications where possible.
Schell
OGC president David Schell said, “Shell will lead the oil and gas industry in introducing requirements for interoperability that will almost immediately begin to influence the software vendors serving that industry. There are special interoperability requirements in oil and gas exploration and production, but here, as in most other industries, the dominant trend is toward standards-enabled integration with more general purpose kinds of software.” Download the new standard from www.opengis.org.
© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.