Retrospective of July Focus Days for SDW IG

Hello SDW-IGgers-

Last week we had some “focus days” to try to move things along; it think
it’s fair to say that we had some partial success (particularly in the BP
work), but also I get the feeling that we’re still working a little in our
silos with isolated pockets of work (WebVMT, MapML etc.). Still- perhaps
that’s just the nature of trying to build momentum for a concept on route
to standardisation; in the early days you need to develop the idea to the
point where other people are willing to commit their time.

Also I note that both Linda and Simon were out of office, so no progress to
speak of on the Geospatial Web Roadmap or SSN type stuff either. Except
that Linda has a couple of outstanding Pull Requests for WebVMT [1] and
MapML [2] to review.

And did anyone try Gitter [0] for easier conversing?

So - let’s quickly review the things that we prioritised during the F2F
meeting in Fort Collins.

OGC Technology Trends [3]
====================
As agreed, George has created a Doodle Poll for the proposed coordination
meeting [4]. As far as I can see, we’re still waiting a proposal to be
shared ahead of that meeting that we can review and comment on.

Jo has some input for the trend map relating to Linked Data that he is not
able to contribute directly to the OGC repo and has asked George/Gobe for
assistance here.

Geospatial Web Roadmap [5]
=====================
Outstanding Pull Requests for WebVMT [1] and MapML [2]

However, during the Fort Collins F2F meeting we agreed to create a list of
OGC standards that are "not yet Web-friendly enough" that we could provide
to the OGC Architecture Board (AOB) for their consideration; including a
rationale for each. The target was for the July OAB.

So I’ve created a new Issue for this and added it to the Project: “Create a
list of OGC standards that are ‘not yet Web-friendly enough’ plus rationale
for each” [6]

MapML [7]
========
Peter R provided an update about the MapML activity [8] and has been busy
providing linkages with the on-going OGC Testbed-14 MapML work [9]. Of
particular note was Peter’s interest in exploring content negotiation for
CRS; I’ve suggested that he creates a new issue for this so we can track it.

Linked Building Data [10]
==================
No progress during the focus days on this subject. However, I have added a
new comment [11] on the LBD strategy funnel ticket to remind us what we
need to talk about when we get to TPAC.

Also, I wanted to note here that as the LBD CG wanted to offload the
geometry serialisation task to another standards group; Josh offered to send
links (and to do the necessary introductions) relating the work originating
from Cesium that aims to create an OGC community standard for geometry
serialisation (3D tiles).

SSN Extensions [12]
==============
No progress during the focus days (except for updating the project
description). Here’s a reminder of the priority activities discussed at the
F2F meeting.

1. help requested to validate SPARQL queries in ED section 4.3 Rules [13] -
particularly regarding nested ObservationCollection.
2. understanding the relationship between [ObservationCollection?] and RDF
data cubes [14]; can this relationship be expressed axiomatically?
3. add examples to ED section 5. Examples [15] - (Josh has an action, Issue
#1043 [16] to add a SensorThings example)

SSN Primer [17]
===========
No progress here - except updating the project description.

SSN/SOSA ontology amendments [18]
===========================
No progress here - except updating the project description. There are two
outstanding issues to resolve; these are listed in the project description.

CityJSON [19]
=========
No progress during the progress days. Discussions from the F2F meeting and
OGC CityGML SWG during Fort Collins suggest that two separate strands of
activity should be pursued:

1. Profiling CityJSON against CityGML v2 (the current standard)
2. Developing a JSON encoding of CityGML v3 (this should be pursued within
the CityGML SWG)

WebVMT [20]
=========
Rob Smith provided a status update on WebVMT [21][22]. Key activities that
Rob needs assistance with is introductions to OGC members who might be
interesting in sponsoring activity around WebVMT within OGC Testbed-15.
Dialogue with Rob is captured here [23]. There are follow-up questions for
Michael Gordon and Linda be Brink.

Statistical data on the Web [24]
=======================
Not much going on here during the focus days. Bill did create a new action
[25] to expand Andrea’s initial assessment of how each of the Data on the
Web Best Practices relate to statistical data.

>From the F2F meeting in Fort Collins, two of the key activities required
were to get the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the OGC’s
nascent Statistics DWG engaged with this work.

Describing moving objects [26]
======================
Nothing to report here except updating the project description. Update from
Jano sought on his thoughts about how to progress this work in time to meet
the Q2 2019 deadline stated in the SDW IG charter - see email [27].

Spatial data on the Web Best Practices [28]
===============================
Plenty of work going on here! At the F2F we agreed to focus on writing
‘Implementation Reports’ (or case studies) that looked at all the best
practices from the scope of a particular project, system or implementation.
We now have a ‘Best Practice Scorecard’ and three implementations:

1. Kadaster (NL)
2. G-NAF (AU)
3. Cadastral and topographic data in North-Rhine Westphalia (DE)

Thank you Linda, Jo and Clements.

There’s an outstanding Pull Request [29] to move these contributions back
into the master branch, this is pending completion of some elements from Jo
and a final review by the contributors.

Michael has also created a new issue [30] concerning the creating of a
playbook for the best practices.

One thing mentioned during the F2F meeting that we’ve not looked at is the
collection of impact statements and collation of these into a report,
aiming to show where the SDW BP document has had [positive!] impact.
Something to consider for the next month perhaps?

Time ontology amendments [31]
=======================
No progress here. The outstanding issue remains Issue #987
<https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/987>: Time ontology uses XML Schema
Datatypes that are not allowed in OWL 2 [32] - the issue was discussed
during the F2F meeting, but as yet there is no conclusion yet regarding
whether new day, month and year datatypes designed to work with OWL2 should
be added to the Time ontology.

...

So that’s the progress update from the focus days. Please shout if I have
missed something out that you think is important. I’m also keen to know if
there are ways that we can improve. Perhaps the most obvious one is making
sure we make more noise on the Mailing List before the days so that (a) you
all know it’s happening, and (b) you’re all clear on what help is needed.

All feedback welcome.

Best regards, Jeremy


[0]: https://gitter.im/w3c/sdw
[1]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/1053
[2]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/1054
[3]:
https://github.com/opengeospatial/OGC-Technology-Trends/blob/master/README.md
[4]: https://doodle.com/poll/iadahamrvz7kgb8x
[5]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/9
[6]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/1057
[7]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/10
[8]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sdwig/2018Jul/0003.html
[9]:
https://github.com/opengeospatial/D012-MapML_Engineering_Report/issues/23
[10]: https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/94
[11]: https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/94#issuecomment-403524002
[12]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/7
[13]: https://w3c.github.io/sdw/proposals/ssn-extensions/#rules
[14]: https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-data-cube/
[15]: https://w3c.github.io/sdw/proposals/ssn-extensions/#examples
[16]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/1043
[17]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/4
[18]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/3
[19]: https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/114
[20]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/8
[21]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sdwig/2018Jul/0000.html
[22]: https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/113#issuecomment-402188986
[23]: https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/113#issuecomment-403445376
[24]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/2
[25]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/1052
[26]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/6
[27]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sdwig/2018Jul/0023.html
[28]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/1
[29]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/1056
[30]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/1050
[31]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/projects/5
[32]: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/987