I would prefer to use the word "raster" as it is inline with user expectations.
A grid coverage can be the formal term used by the OGC if you are doing
something crazy like serving up a raster via WFS (i.e. a GridCoverage extends a
Feature).
How about this for consistency:
- raster - data stored in a regular array (typical example is row / column ).
Data may be measurements (like DEM) or RGB values ready for display
- image - a visualisation recorded in pixels (often RGB). You can
"georeference" an image by supplying a referenced envelope allowing it to be
used as a raster.
- grid coverage - the OGC representation of a raster, formally each entry in
the regular array is represented as a Record, with a consistent RecordType. We
represent a GridCoverage as a Feature, with one of the attributes providing the
raster data, or for dynamic access one of the attributes can be a
GridCoverageReader.
You are correct that a "Coverage" allows for a vector based representation,
thus the use of the "Grid Coverage" above.
Since OGC has deprecated their GridCoverage specification. I think we would be
able to clean up our language to use Raster consistently during the development
of GeoTools 9?
--
Jody Garnett
On Tuesday, 14 August 2012 at 7:57 AM, Martin Davis wrote:
> As part of the process metadata cleanup exercise, it would be nice to
> standardize on a single term to use to refer to the data structure
> represented by the GridCoverage class. In various contexts within GeoTools
> this is referred to as a "coverage", a "grid", and a "raster".
>
> External to GeoTools I think "grid" and "raster" are used more widely than
> "coverage". And I believe the OGC definition of coverage allows for
> vector-based polygonal and network coverages as well, so perhaps the term
> "coverage" is too general to be used to refer to grids/rasters? Of course
> some of the processes use "Coverage" in their names, but the metadata could
> still use an alternate term to provide more clarity.
>
> Is there any preference for using "grid" or "raster"?
>
>
>
> --
> Martin Davis OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org (http://opengeo.org/)
> Expert service straight from the developers.
>
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