OGC Announces Participation in FOSS4G Conference.

WAYLAND, Mass. -- The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC[R]) will participate in the 2008 Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference (http://www.foss4g2008.org/) September 29 - October 3, 2008 at Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa. FOSS4G 2008 is organized by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) (http://www.osgeo.org) in cooperation with the Geo-Information Society of South Africa (GISSA) (http://www.gissa.org.za).

The two organizations have begun to collaborate to promote the synergy between open standards and open source software in the geospatial domain. The OGC, founded in 1994, is the world's leading industry organization for geoprocessing standards used by the world's providers of geoprocessing software. The OSGeo's goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led open source geospatial software projects, most of which depend on open standards like those from the OGC.

Raj Singh, Director of Interoperability Programs at OGC, will discuss the open source work of OGC members in the conference's demo theater. He will also deliver a paper on "WFS Simple," (http://www.ogcnetwork.net/wfssimple) a candidate standard for consideration by the OGC membership. WFS Simple is similar in many respects to the OGC's OpenGIS Web Feature Service Interface Standard, but it simplifies implementation by excluding certain features, and it does not require GML as an output format. This talk will discuss how WFS Simple could be important not only for scientific data access, but also for mashing up Atom and GeoRSS feeds. Raj Singh will also describe an open source Java library for building a WFS Simple service that was prototyped in the OGC's Kentucky Landscape Census pilot project.

The OGC[R] is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS[R] Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.