Frequently Asked Questions
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Which standards are of interest to ESRI?
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What is the Open GIS Consortium?
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Which OGC specifications are implemented by ESRI software?
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What are OGC Web Map Services?
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What are OGC Web Feature Services?
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Can I download these connectors?
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What is LBS?
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What is OpenLS?
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What technologies does ESRI use for implementing LBS?
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Does ESRI support GML?

1. Which standards are of interest to ESRI?
ESRI is interested in all standards
that will help our users be successful in their day-to-day
operations. ESRI has a large team of people involved in
each of the phases of developing open standards including
creating standards, reviewing standards, and integrating
standards into our products. ESRI also works with a number
of standards organizations and directly participates in
the creation, review, and introduction of industry standards.
ESRI participates in standards organizations
at all levels: national, international, regional, and industry
specific. For example, ESRI's products meet U.S. military
and NATO standards, U.S. government standards such as the
Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS), Federal Geographic
Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Geospatial Metadata,
and international standards such as the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) metadata standard. In addition,
ESRI employs Internet standards, such as XML, SOAP, and
UDDI, throughout our products and solutions.
View a complete list of standards
organizations ESRI participates in.
2. What is the Open GIS Consortium?
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OCG),
is an international industry consortium of more than 230
companies, government agencies, and universities aimed at
growing interoperability for technologies involving spatial
information and location. The OGC mission is to deliver
spatial interface specifications that are openly available
for global use. Open interfaces and protocols defined by
OpenGIS specifications support interoperable solutions that
"geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services
(LBS), and mainstream information technology.
ESRI is a principal member of the
Open GIS Consortium. Principal membership means that ESRI
participates and votes in both the OGC Technical Committee
and the OGC Planning Committee.
3. Which OGC specifications are implemented by
ESRI software?
ESRI participates in a majority
of the OGC Interoperability Program Initiatives involved
in specification development. As the specifications are
in development, ESRI develops prototype implementations
in a test bed environment. Once the specifications have
matured, ESRI implements the OGC specifications that will
provide the most benefit to users in its core software products.
To date, ESRI has implemented the
OGC Simple Feature Access Specification (in ArcSDE and ArcGIS),
the OGC Catalog Service Specification (in ArcIMS and the
Metadata Explorer), the OGC Web Mapping Specification (in
ArcIMS and ArcExplorer), the OGC Web Feature Specification
(in ArcIMS and ArcExplorer), and a suite of Open Location
Services (OpenLS) Specifications (in ArcLocation
Services) to provide solutions for location-based services.
4. What are OGC Web Map Services?
ESRI uses an OGC Web Map Service
(WMS) Connector, which enables ArcIMS to provide Web map
services that adhere to the OpenGIS Web Map Service Implementation
Specification.
The OGC WMS Connector:
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Produces maps of georeferenced
data
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Renders maps in an image format
such as PNG, GIF, or JPEG
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Creates a standard means for
users to request maps on the Web
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Creates a standard means for
servers to describe data holdings
5. What are OGC Web Feature Services?
ESRI uses an OGC Web Feature Service
(WFS) Connector, which enables ArcIMS to provide Web feature
services that adhere to the OpenGIS Web Feature Service
Implementation Specification.
The OGC WFS Connector:
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Provides access to geographic
feature (vector) data
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Supports query requests
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mplements interfaces for data
manipulation operations on Geographic Markup Language
(GML) features served from data stores that are accessible
via the Internet
6. Can I download these connectors?
The WMS and WFS connectors are available to download from the
ESRI Interoperability Technology Download Center.
7. What is LBS?
Location-based services are location application services that
integrate spatial data and processing resources into telecommunications and
wireless Internet services infrastructure. Location services are bringing huge
benefits to emergency response, public safety, public transportation, critical
infrastructure protection, and disaster management. For more information, visit
www.esri.com/arclocationservices.
8. What is OpenLS?
OpenLS or Open Location Services
is an OGC initiative intended to produce open specifications
for interoperable location application services that will
integrate spatial data and processing resources into telecommunications
and Internet services infrastructure. OpenLS consists of
a series of rapid-paced, collaborative engineering test
beds and pilots that yield robust, end-to-end, multivendor
location service solutions.
According to the OpenLS specification,
OGC's open architecture for location services will be based
on interfaces and protocols that support core services including
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Gateway services that integrate
OpenLS location application services with position determination
equipment in the MPC/GMLC (the place in the network that
manages the location of devices)
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Directory services for searching
Yellow Pages, green pages, travel guides, and so forth
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Route determination services
for navigation
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Geocode (address to x,y) and
reverse geocode (x,y to address) services
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Map/Feature display services
9. What
technologies does ESRI use for implementing LBS?
ESRI is actively working on LBS
test beds that conform to the OpenLS specifications set
out by OGC. The primary products used for implementing LBS
are ArcIMS and ArcWeb Services. ESRI uses the following
standard technologies in these implementations: Java 2 Platform
Standard Edition (J2SE), Java 2 Platform Micro Edition (J2ME),
and XML.
10. Does ESRI support
GML?
Yes. Geography Markup Language is
an OpenGIS Implementation Specification designed to transport
and store geographic information. It is a profile (encoding)
of XML (Extensible Markup Language). OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) for ArcIMS currently implement
interfaces for data manipulation operations on GML features
served on data stores that are accessible via the Internet.
ESRI has created an Interoperability extension for ArcExplorer--Java Edition 4.0.1 to access
OGC Web feature services as well as read GML files directly.
ESRI is also building prototype ArcGIS implementations that
utilize GML for accessing geographic features.
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