Hello all
As mentioned in my previous email (report from OGC meeting), the OGC
white paper about API is public for comments:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opengeospatial/api_whitepaper/master/book.pdf
Chapter 1 describes various kinds of API (programmatic languages like
Java interfaces, or WebAPI like REST, etc). Chapters 2 and 4 discuss
what is an "Open API", how they relate to "Open Standard" and "Open
Source", and proposes way to define such API. Chapter 3 introduces the
idea of "OGC API essentials" as a subset existing standards, including
Well Known Text (WKT) format, filter encoding, etc.
I do not have experience with WebAPI or REST; if anyone see what could
be the relationship between the API whitepaper proposals and Apache
projects, I would be interested to read.
About Java interfaces like the one used by Apache SIS, I'm not quite
sure where they could fit in this picture. In particular the chapter 5
summarizes actions that OGC could take. I see those actions as focussed
on the communication between a web server and a web client. For example
I think (but I'm not sure) that current "OWS Common" is mostly about
XML, and the proposed update would be for REST needs; "OGC essential"
items like WKT are for data exchange and do not map directly to methods
in a Java API for example. I wonder if it would be appropriate to
suggest one more item in chapter 5 with something along the like of Java
Community Process (JCP) for defining interfaces in programming
languages? This is what GeoAPI tries to do at OGC, but I'm interested in
the general approach rather than a specific project.
Martin
