the need for a glossary

Hello everyone,

Following yesterdays teleconference, I think it would be a good idea to 
create a glossary page on the wiki, with concise definitions of the 
terms we use in communication. We operate in a confluence of two 
domains, so there is a risk of not fully understanding each other's 
jargon. Besides that, we want to be clear towards external interested 
people, who can have very different backgrounds.
What we certainly want to avoid is thinking that we are talking about 
the same thing when in fact we are not!

Two examples come to mind:

When discussing spatial information, I once was involved in a long and 
headache inducing discussion about whether a geographical name is a 
feature (a 'feature' is a very basic concept in the OGC world). It was 
rather hard to find the place in the OGC standards where the feature 
concept is defined, but still that did not resolve the issue.

Another discussion I took part in was taking place in the Linked Data 
domain. It involved a basic concept of the semantic web, the 'resource'. 
It was apparent that the concept is hard to grasp for some people, and 
that it is somewhat open to interpretation. Especially with the 
distinction between an 'information resource' and a 'non information 
resource', and a definition that has changed somewhat over time.

If we agree that having a glossary page is a good idea I would be happy 
to start one and put 'spatial feature' and 'spatial context' on it.

A side effect would be that we will have URLs for definitions that can 
be used on other web pages.

Regards,
Frans

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Frans Knibbe
Geodan
President Kennedylaan 1
1079 MB Amsterdam (NL)

T +31 (0)20 - 5711 347
E frans.knibbe@geodan.nl
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