Slashgeo

The It is what it is blog has a nice summary of what is REST and its implication for GIS. From the entry: "State Transfer in the public standards-based GIS world (where REST really starts to achieve critical mass) is still all about the read-only flow of data from publishers to browsers. [...] Just becaues those resources have lat/longs doesn't mean that GIS should suddenly be the center of the universe. Why do I have to use KML for resources that probably have extremely rich alternate representations already?" This is the first of a series of upcoming entries.

Remember the previous entry on REST and GIS? Could RESTful webmapping become OGC standards? The cfis and import cartography blogs discuss new REST interest at the Open Geospatial Consortium. Here's the second post and the third. From the third post: "Everything that's wrong the the WxS Suite (that's a fancy acronym for Web Map Server, Web Feature Server, Web Context Server, etc.) boils down to one thing - they are based on the fundamentaly flawed concept of service endpoints. A service endpoint is a program sitting on the network that defines its own API."

Anonymous Voxel writes "From rajsingh.org blog: REST has been a hot topic this year in the geo world. There’s a discussion group, a geographic data server, many blog posts, and email discussions. I’ve been mulling over what this means to OGC over the last couple months, reading RESTful Web Services, and discussing with the various advocates around the community. After all this, I think I know what’s going on, but I don’t think there’s any one clear explanation (despite some nice pieces of the puzzle here and here) available, and there has certainly been little effort to analyze the REST architecture in relation to geographic information systems theory, so that’s what I’ll try to do now." See related stories below.

The previous poll regarding who's doing geospatial work at your office gave these results, out of 54 votes: 42% of geospatial tasks are done by geospatial professionals, 25% are done by a diversified mix of professionals, 11% from computer scientists which learned geospatial stuff, other interesting results include only 3% from certified geospatial professionals and 5% by someone not qualified!

The new poll ask you about REST and GIS, a hot topic in the geospatial world this summer, and no, we're not talking about that kind of rest.

A new OSGeo mailing list is now up: standards@lists.osgeo.org. The new list will host discussions on topics related to the huge world of standards, focusing on and starting from existing and possible relationships between OGC standards and activities on open source geospatial software.

Here's the link to signup: http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/standards

Despite regular REST coverage this summer (see related stories below), 48% of the 60 answers clearly show how REST is not understood by most geospatial professionals. Of the other half, 26% claim RESTful approaches will prevail, and 16% are waiting for the Open Geospatial Consortium to join the bandwagon. 8% say they don't need REST themselves and no one said REST will have no impact, probably meaning REST is really important. Our new poll ask you about your feelings on the extent of geospatial technology presence on the web. Unrelated, I'll now try to catch up the 1000+ geonews item I missed in the last two weeks due to my accident, expect more stories.

The MetaCarta Labs demonstrate the world’s first Open Source Browser-Based AtomPub GIS Client. Try AtomPub in action via OpenLayers and FeatureServer right here, try it, it's surprising how easy it is to modify vector data. The CFIS blog adds more info on AtomPub and GIS interoperability, as well as this older entry from import cartography on AtomPub, KML and Google Earth. This is perfect timing considering RESTful knowledge amongst us. From the MetaCarta lab: " MetaCarta Labs is strongly in support of RESTful technology around GIS. FeatureServer is a REST-based geographic feature storage engine, which includes relatively complete Atom Publishing Protocol support. Using FeatureServer and OpenLayers, it is possible to create an AtomPub client, which uses input from the user to create geometries, and allows users to modify and save their changes, all via Atom + GeoRSS."

Here's several interesting recent articles and reprints from Directions Magazine. First is Adena's geospatial industry top ten of 2007, unsurprisingly generic but interesting nonetheless. There's a brief article from Microsoft's Bill Gail on public vs private remote sensing data: "The success of privately funded systems can be evaluated by spreadsheet, while that of publicly funded systems must somehow be related to diffuse concepts such as the value of a human life or animal habitat, scientific progress, and national prosperity/security." Then there's an article named creating an extensible GIS using SOA and web services, it's generic but pertinent: "An SOA [service-oriented architecture] approach can expand the benefits of proper communication by allowing more streamlined communications between systems, as well as people and processes." There's a note on the U.S. NGA support for Afghan Mapping Initiative: "As part of the initiative, NGA will install a nationwide geodetic network, procure and install a basic map production system, provide training and conduct joint AGCHO-NGA projects." There's an article on the future of mobile devices. There's an article named geography lessons for online retailers: "Knowing where and how Web visitors are accessing the Internet is fundamental to preventing online fraud and complying with regulations." Then there's an article on GIS integration in the transportation sector: "In some instances, a general shortage of knowledge regarding GIS capabilities makes the task of integration seem more complex and can unfairly outweigh the immense value, usefulness and functionality available." There's an interesting article from OGC's Sam Bacharach on geospatial standards and technology convergence: "Knowing what data to share and what data not to share is a balancing act, but in business and research, the game is clearly moving in the direction of openness. In both domains, of course, security, access, liability and intellectual property rights - implemented in automated service chains - are becoming very important policy and technical requirements." And the last one, a 2007 stock performance analysis of geospatial companies: "Stock market investing is never for the faint of heart, but clearly the location technology market sector is hot." Please allow this unusually long Slashgeo story, I'm still catching up geonews from the last four weeks.