Galdos Systems has been instrumental in the development of various standards in the OGC and ISO, and has provided input into a number of others. Galdos is active in the four main standards bodies that are influential in the creation and ratification of standards that affect GeoWeb services:
Because the formal international standardisation of these specifications is very important to Galdos and its customers, Galdos participates in ISO, which ratifies and endorses standards from OGC, W3C, and OASIS from a global perspective. Galdos brings expertise in geographical information and web services to these groups, and takes away an understanding of the standards that its customers seek to meet and adhere to in their businesses.
Ron Lake has been instrumental in the development of standards in the OGC and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). He was awarded the Gardels Medal for his contributions to the creation and development of the Geography Markup Language (GML). GML is the core encoding for geographical data delivered through Open Standards based GeoWeb services.
Galdos was part of the team that submitted the KML 2.2 Specification to the Open Geospatial Consortium, which was approved as an open standard in 2008. Galdos continues to be active in ongoing development on the KML standard through the OGC Mass Market Domain Working Group. This group approves specific OGC KML Extensions developed by other KML Working Groups. Anyone can create an extension for KML but, in order for an extension to approved as part of the KML standard, it must follow the OGC’s defined process and be approved by the Working Group responsible for maintaining that standard.
Supporting Open Standards
Galdos supports OGC standards and initiatives, and also participates in wider web standards working groups including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
Galdos is active on several technical committees and working groups, including:
- Canadian representative to the ISO/TC211 – Geographic information/Geomatics technical committee
- charter member of the OGC CSW-ebRIM Standards Working Group
- chair of OGC GMLJP2 Standards Working Group
- co-chair of the OGC GML Standards Working Group
- co-chair of OGC Mass Market Domain Working Group
- voting member of the OGC CityGML Standards Working Group
- member of the OGC 3D Information Management (3DIM) Working Group
- liaison between the OGC RegRep Standards Working Group and the OASIS RegRep Technical Committee
Galdos hosted the first OGC-sponsored GML Developer Days, and continues to host the annual GeoWeb Conference.
Leveraging Open Standards
Galdos takes a pragmatic approach to the use of standards, in order to position the company at the heart of all things “Geo” and “Web” related. Galdos aligns its business and vision to the Open Standards movement in computing, services definitions, and data standards in order to implement the GeoWeb and realise the benefits it can deliver. To provide solutions that are effective, scalable, and future-proof, GeoWeb services must be built on a platform of stable and internationally recognized standards.
