Alright,
Here are some other thoughts.
First off what about a open office (open base) type approach...
This
mimmics the ESRI MSAccess approach and seams to work well for non
server
environments. Also open office is a good environment for some basic
applications.
Next, what ever happened to the adoption of GML... Was GML not
supposed
to be the NEXT interchange fomrat? Perhaps this is a good
discussion to
include the GML gurus in. The whole discussion of going with a
binary
GML format makes sense and GML is already used for many web mapping
(feature) services. It sounds like a duplication of GML to me...
Unless
someone can offer a direct compare and contrast between the concept
here
and the GML/Binary GML concept.
In either case being able to convert to and from GML would be a
necesity
for wide adoption IMHO.
Another thought is to encourage some of the proprietary formats to
open
up. What would it take to get ESRI on board to open up the format
(open
as in free speech). What about other non-open standards? Once it's
open
then we can bring the SHP format to modern day useage. Surely
much of
the format could be salvaged.
Besides, if you want wide adoption of an open format then why not
go for
those players who hold greatest market share.
Some thoughts.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of P Kishor
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 09:53
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] idea for an OSGeo project -- a new,
open data
format
So, I am thinking, Shapefile is the de facto data standard for GIS
data.
That it is open (albeit not Free) along with the deep and wide
presence
of ESRI's products from the beginning of the epoch, it has been
widely
adopted. Existence of shapelib, various language bindings, and
ready use
by products such as MapServer has continued to cement Shapefile
as the
format to use. All this is in spite of Shapefile's inherent
drawbacks,
particularly in the area of attribute data management.
What if we came up with a new and improved data format -- call it
"Open
Shapefile" (extension .osh) -- that would be completely Free,
single-file based (instead of the multiple .shp, .dbf, .shx, etc.),
and
based on SQLite, giving the .osh format complete relational data
handling capabilities. We would require a new version of Shapelib,
improved language bindings, make it the default and preferred
format for
MapServer, and provide seamless and painless import of regular .shp
data
into .osh for native rendering. Its adoption would be quick in the
open
source community. The non-opensource community would either not
give a
rat's behind for it, but it wouldn't affect them...
they would still work with their preferred .shp until they learned
better. By having a completely open and Free single-file based,
built on
SQLite, fully relational dbms capable spatial data format, it
would be
positioned for continued improvement and development.
Is this too crazy?
--
Puneet Kishor
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