>> I would like to see this as a single discrete object: with the list I >> made above (FeatureType, Features, Summary) boiled down to a single >> class. > > Hum, FeatureType does not seem to be boiled down effectively, the > FeatureType of a FeatureCollection simply does not make sense to me? > I think I would expect getFeatureType returned the feature type of > features contained in the collection, but that's not what happens (because > the current implementation says FeatureCollection IsA Feature, something I > don't believe it's right despite what OGC may say).
It's been awhile since I fired up my brain to think about this, but when I last did my thought was that getFeatureType on a FeatureCollection should return a schema with a 'choice' of unlimited multiplicity of the featureTypes of the features in the collection. If the feature model can represent choice and multiplicities then it should be able to return this. And then for a MultiFeatureCollection (the implementation that can handle more than one feature - ie from memory datastore and the like, or the result of multiple queries) we should additionally have a getCollectionTypes method or some such, which returns an array of the possible featureTypes. And perhaps a TypedFeatureCollection with a getCollectionType() method that just returns the single allowed featureType, and will reject other attempts to add it. But I'm not sure that's necessarily the way to go, it's just what I thought at the time when we were trying to get it to implement Collection and Feature and be backwards compatible. As for the debate in general, I do think you can get a lot of the advantages of people's familiarity with the Collection API by just coding it to be similar, without necessarily completely implementing its interface. And we can do the same with feature/featureCollections - I like the idea of having some of the same convenience methods, like getBounds. But it may be stretching to insist that they really are the same thing. Though our feature model should be rich enough that we could express things that way if we really wanted. But I'm not going to be able to keep up with the debate, but I think it's a timely one to have. best regards, Chris ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
