The purpose of OGC API – Common – Part 2: Geospatial Data is to provide a common connection between the Application Programming Interface landing page and resource-specific details. The Open Geospatial Consortium expects your comments to be in by January 5, 2022.

Building blocks and their foundation

OGC APIs are the Consortium’s Building Blocks for ‘location’. They are ushering in a new age for location information on the web. Together, they’ll enable a much simpler, consistent, and familiar way to share and access location information. Through the Application Programming Interfaces, the Open Geospatial Consortium community is improving how location information can be integrated: by any developer, with any other type of information, and into any type of application. Firstly, OGC API – Common serves as a foundation upon which the Consortium builds all APIs. Secondly, Part 1: Core defines the resources and access mechanisms which are useful for a client seeking to understand the offerings and capabilities of an API. Thirdly and lastly, OGC API – Common – Part 2: Geospatial Data builds on Part 1 by providing a common connection between the API landing page and geospatial data collections.

Organizing aggregate data collections

We rarely consider geospatial data as a single entity. Feature Collections, Coverages, Data Sets, are all aggregations of spatial or temporal ‘things’. It stands to reason that an OGC Web API would also expose its holdings as aggregates of spatial resources. The purpose of the OGC API – Common – Part 2 Standard, then, is to provide a means of organizing these aggregate collections. Furthermore, they are there to define operations for the discovery and selection of individual collections. The Common – Part 2 Standard does not specify the nature of the geospatial data that make up a collection. Rather, it provides a basic capability that we can apply to any geospatial resource type. Additional OGC Web API standards extend this foundation to define resource-specific capabilities.

Naming conventions

In parallel to this public review, the Naming Authority is assessing the naming conventions. Users will later on find these in the Requirements Modules defined in the candidate Standard. These conventions are important in the continued modularization of the OGC APIs, so careful review by experts is welcomed.

ogcapi.org
Members join the OGC API – Common SWG via the OGC Portal
OGC API – Common – Part 2: Geospatial Data Candidate Standard on the OGC Portal
OGC API – Common – Part 2: Geospatial Data Standard’s public comment request page