OGC Survey for DMAC ST

1. OGC Survey for DMAC ST Luis Bermudez Director of Interoperability Certification lbermudez@opengeospatial.org January 18th, 2011 Washington DC

2. !5 Responses • NASA JPL • IMOS • ASA • OBIS • EDAC • USGS • FWC • WHOI • NOAA / IOOS • DNR – MD • NOAA/NODC • BOEING • SCCOOS • NERACOOS • OBIS-USA

3. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) • Presenter Name : Michelle Gierarch • The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the lead U.S. center for robotic exploration of the solar system, and conducts major programs in space-based Earth sciences. • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization? I • We are trying to be compatible with OGC standards such as WMS, WCS, and WFS, but they are not our default "standard" protocol.  

4. OGC Relation • Are you a member (yes or no) - YES • If so, which forums do you participate? • YES .. But no specifics

5. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), uses WMS/WCS/WFS • WMS to provide rendered image(png and jpeg) from L2 and L3 data to our various tools. • WCS ( this is on its way. We have services already that are ready to use this protocol. ) • WFS to search and provide information about natural events like hurricane… • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • have plan to use OGC standards where applicable on all of our web services. 

6. Pros ans Cons of OGC standards • PRO: - Basic profiles of various OGC standards do insure a useful compatibility level between applications • PRO: - Use of OGC standards fosters collaboration with other users • CON: - Small community of OGC participants leads to a proliferation of rapidly evolving specifications of little use, sometimes even overlapping ones

8. Title of Organization • Presenter Name : Roger Proctor • 1 sentence about the organization: Australian Ocean Data Network / Integrated Marine Observing System • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes

9. OGC Relation • Are you a member (yes or no) AODN/IMOS is a member through the Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility (AODCJF) • If so, which forums do you participate? Public?

10. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • Here are some of the ways in which we use OGC web services: • We harvest metadata via WCS, WMF, WFS & SOS getCapabilities documents (for IMOS and AODN observations). • We support CSW through Geonetwork for search access via the IMOS/AODN portal, and potentially other clients. • SOS is also used to publish data for the South Esk sensor web project. • GeoServer is used to publish WMS/WFS (for use by the IMOS/AODN portal). • some IMOS data is published via THREDDS, which implements WMS (ncWMS) and WCS. • We will generate KML. • We use SensorML for the South Esk project, and there is talk of a sensor repository that will support SensorML. • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • Non-specific, see answer to next question.

11. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? • We use or consider many standards such as OPeNDAP, REST services, OAI-PMH, StarFL, ISO metadata standards etc. Sometimes these overlap or compete with OGC standards. We try to adopt the most widely used standards (where possible). We are, nevertheless, supportive of the OGC standards and would like to see these improved and further adopted in our organisation where appropriate.

12. Challenges • List of Challenges • In general, the standards don't always fit our needs. I don't think there's and easy solution as making the standards more general isn't necessarily useful either. The OGC standards are also sometimes complicated and not consistently implemented, which reduces interoperability.

14. ASA • Presenter Name : Eoin Howlett • 1 sentence about the organization: Private consulting company specializing in data management solutions for the ocean, atmospheric and GIS community • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes

15. OGC Relation • Are you a member (yes or no) Yes • If so, which forums do you participate? Actively participated in NetCDF standards, some participation in a metocean IE.

16. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • WMS, WCS, WFS, SWE, KML, NetCDF • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • WCS, WPS, WCPS, WMTS • OGC Web Map Service – Proposed Animation Service Extension

17. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? Custom JSON for responses of WMS GetFeatureInfo, Custom NetCDF conventions, Custom cataloging solutions, ESRI products (Geodatabases, shapefiles), Postgres/PostGIS, SpatialLite, and Oracle spatial databases, ERDDAP no-standard response formats.

18. Challenges • Complexity and non-homogenous specifications • Client tools to support OGC services • Performance (practicality of some standards) • Import into ESRI products a hassle. We end up coming up with a custom solution. • Lack of testing suite to test developed OGC services

19. WMS (with GetFeatureInfo)

20. WMS and SOS

21. NetCDF and WMS

23. OBIS • Presenter Name : Edward VandenBerghe (Mark Fornwall) • An on-line, open-access, globally-distributed network of systematic, ecological, and environmental information systems • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes

24. OGC Relation • Are you a member (yes or no) - no • If so, which forums do you participate?

25. OGC Standards in your organization • OBIS web site (www.obis.org) is built around GeoServer, so has OGC services built-in. • It provides data via WFS and WMS, and KML

26. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? • GCMD for metadata (also FGDC within OBIS USA); • DiGIRfor data exchange protocol; Darwin Core for exchange format.

27. Challenges • getCapabilities: We haven’t allowed direct public access to the OGC capabilities of our GeoServer yet, as this would 1/ make it difficult for us to monitor use, and 2/ we're afraid that users are going to swamp our servers with data requests that are to broad; so we wanted to build a layer between OGC and the user, trying to log activity, and stop overly broad requests.

28. Challenges • Too many layers: One of the problems we were facing while building the web site is that we have too many layers - each taxon is a layer, and there are several 1000s of those; so we can't predefine them, we have to be able to query the database on the fly. We worked with Chris Holmes and his people at The Open Plan Project to extend the functionality of GeoServer. It has worked very well.

30. Earth Data Analysis Center • Presenter Name : Karl Benedict (kbene@edac.unm.edu) • EDAC is an applied geospatial technologies center affiliated with the University of New Mexico • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes

31. OGC Relation • EDAC is a University member of OGC • Thus far we have primarily lurked in the various forums looking for indications of where the standards are heading to facilitate our project planning.

32. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • WMS/Time-enabled WMS, WFS, WCS, CSW, KML • Purpose • Geospatial Clearinghouse (http://rgis.unm.edu) • Core application infrastructure: data access & exchange, web mapping • Content delivery to non-geo specialists • Pros & Cons • Pros: broad support in a wide variety of client platforms and programming frameworks/libraries • Cons: server and client implementations remain uneven in their capabilities, stability, and performance. • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • WPS

33. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? • OPeNDAP – as an alternative access model for data published through the THREDDS server platform • OAI-PMH – metadata harvesting with other systems for repurposing of metadata also published via CSW • X39.50 – additional catalog service protocol provided by the GeoNetwork platform being used for catalog services • HTTP (REST) – general web services “standard” for functionality not directly supported by OGC and other standards • ISO19115 (and related standards: 19115-2, 19139) – metadata content model and XML encoding

34. Challenges • Slow uptake & understanding by end-user community => services as infrastructure that end-users don’t necessarily know is there. Need for tools and wrappers for services as the elements that clients interact with. • Incomplete/unstable implementation by some data providers (e.g. incorrect representation of time parameters in time-enabled WMS) • Need for expanded parameterization within KML for more efficient time support (i.e. adopt ISO model used in time-enabled WMS)

35. WMS / Time-enabled WMS • Dust Forecast Products • Publication of hourly dust forecast products for the greater Southwest region of the US in a variety of formats • Animated GIFs for direct linking in web pages • Custom web mapping clients • KML files for visualization in Google Earth • Issues • Limited direct client support for time-enabled WMS requires developing custom conversion tools and application interfaces

36. WCS • Data exchange for distributed environmental modeling • Publication of meteorological forecast products and low-resolution dust forecasts for use in setting boundary conditions and parameterizing high-resolution dust models • Issues • No significant issues. As this is an automated system, client support was not a large issue.

37. WMS => KML • Automated re-packaging data published as WMS into KML for streamlined access and delivery to non-geospatial users • Developed scripted converters from WMS capabilities XML to KML wrapper for WMS map images • XSLT for WMS -> KML • Python script for time-enabled WMS - > KML • Issues • Temporal dimension in capabilities XML files published by some services do not comply with OGC model • XSLT method of conversion of time-enabled WMS -> KML exposed some recursion limitations in traditional XML processing tools

39. US Geological Survey • Presenter Name : Rich Signell • USGS Mission: “Science for a Changing World” • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes.

40. OGC Relation • The USGS is an OGC Member • Architecture DWG (Arch DWG) Lead, Doug Nebert, US Geological Survey (USGS) • Catalog DWG (Cat DWG) Lead, Doug Nebert, US Geological Survey (USGS) • cf-netcdf-1.0.swg: Rich Signell • Hydro Domain Working Group: Nate Booth, Roland Viger • Sponsors OGC Interoperability Program initiatives

41. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • WMS , WCS, SOS, WPS, NetCDF encoding • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • CF

42. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? OpenDAP + CF Conventions , because OGC standards cannot yet represent 4D model output in a standard way. • ESRI REST services • OBIS

43. Challenges • WMS: tiling standard: is it standard yet? • WCS: not many clients, not sure how it’s progressing. Can we progress to non-uniform data? • WPS: would love to have a hands-on-workshop, perhaps led by USGS CIDA (Nate Booth, Dave Blodgett, Tom Kunicki)?

44. OGC WMS • We use the Godiva2 web client to access extended WMS (ncWMS) all the time as a quick browse of model (and other gridded data) results

45. OGC WPS, WCS and OPenDAP/CF • USGS GeoData Portal (GDP): http://cida.usgs.gov/climate/gdp/ • This is a very cool interactive climate app build by USGS CIDA folks, using WPS, WCS, OPeNDAP/CF, THREDDS

47. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission • Presenter Name : Kathleen OKeife • 1 sentence about the organization: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, a state agency. • Are OGC Web Services a standard technology in your organization ? Yes, we use several of the standards.

48. OGC Relation • Are you a member (yes or no) No. • If so, which forums do you participate?

49. OGC Standards in your organization • OGC standards being used • WMS, WFS, KML, XML, REST • Planned OGC standards to be used in the next three years: • Perhaps we will add GML

50. Non OGC standards • Which non OGC standards are you using and why ? Do not know. Cannot answer for the whole agency.