KML Now an OGC Standard: World Changing?

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Monday, April 14. 2008

KML Now an OGC Standard: World Changing?

OGC in a few minutes will offer a press release noting passage of OGC KML as an approved specification (standard). C|net already announced the news. Will this change how you think about or use KML? Perhaps it will change how you think about Google, or OGC?

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, Standards at 13:09 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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Folks are addressing this question, just not here. (That's fine!)

A roundup:

Martin Daly
http://blog.lostinspatial.com/2008/04/15/the-kml-kargo-kult/
"About a year ago I was on a panel at a Geobrowsers workshop. I said then that KML was not so special when the K still stood for Keyhole. I don’t think that it has been made more special than it already was by making the K stand for OGC."

Raj Singh (who works for OGC):
http://www.rajsingh.org/blog/2008/04/15/kml-now-an-ogc-open-standard/
"...it’s great to see the mainstream IT media “get it” when it comes to our technologies and markets.
This is hopefully a big win for individuals who contribute data to one site, and would like to use it in many others — not to mention the companies whose business model revolves around these altruistic, bottom-up data providers. One small step for OGC, and one big step towards breaking down data silos!"

Matt Giger
http://blog.earthbrowser.com/2008/04/kml-libkml-and-standard-mistake.html
"Passing off KML to the OGC so it could become a "standard" was a big mistake for Google."

#1 Adena Schutzberg (Link) on 2008-04-15 08:33 (Reply)

KML is, indeed, a mistake for OGC. It's a mistake because OGC is moving toward BIM tools that could have greater precision, and be far more useful, than KML. Adopting KML will stall and/or effectively derail BIM development paths.

KML is ab-so-lute-ly wretched as a rendering format; too many KML's locally and you need major horsepower to drive the view. So a wider adoption of KML will drag the performance of Google clients into ESRI-like rendering speeds...which renders the advantages of the thin client moot.

#2 Archie Belaney on 2008-04-15 10:31 (Reply)

Agreed that KML is not much good as a rendering format, but it's a useful interchange format. There are several open source virtual globes now available in various stages of completion, and KML is used in most of them. NASA WorldWind, for example, is a rich client for OGC-standard mapservers, which uses ample local caching to provide much better interactive performance than GE, esp. for time series animation -- and for KML presentation.

The difference between them that makes GE important is its data quality. Google's data licensing agreements limit access to its streams to the GE client, but there is no reason the GE client should not have access to other streams using an open standard; and there are good reasons for other specialized virtual globe clients to share standard protocols for specialized geospatial data streams. Google's most useful contribution to OGC would be a standard for geospatial tiling and network streaming that's more useful than WMS and HTTP.

#2.1 Alex Brown (Link) on 2008-04-19 11:41 (Reply)

As chair of the OGC 3D Information Management (3DIM) Working Group, I assure you our initiatives in CAD-BIM, city models, and related areas are not derailed by KML adoption. This is an "and" not an "or" for the geospatial standards community and a win for OGC, Google, and the wider geo-enabled community.

OGC KML is all about "encoding representations of geographic data for display in an earth browser". The keywords are representations and display. For interoperability of richer 3D data and services, the OGC membership is continuing work towards adoption of new standards (i.e. CityGML) and extensions of current standards to enable functions such as indoor LBS, emergency response, and infrastructure management. KML is wonderful for simple geometric modeling and portrayal, but other standards are needed for building information models. Our partnerships with the IAI for IFC and the Web3D Consortium for X3D are part of the emerging solution.

Tim Case

#2.2 Tim Case on 2008-04-20 12:50 (Reply)

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