- From: Greg Janee <gjanee@alexandria.ucsb.edu>
- Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:38:04 -0400 (EDT)
- To: xmlschema-dev@w3.org
Hello,
The Alexandria Digital Library Project has just released version 1.0
of the "ADL Gazetteer Protocol" at
http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/~gjanee/gazetteer/
What the heck is a gazetteer? From the intro...
[[[
A gazetteer maps geographic placenames (the names of natural
features such as mountains and lakes and the names of human
constructs such as cities and states) to coordinate-based
geographic locations...
The services associated with a gazetteer are largely oriented
around searching: finding a place given all or part of its name
("where is the place named 'Santa Barbara'?"); finding all places
in a given region ("what's here?"); and finding places that have
some kind of relationship to a known place ("what schools are
within Santa Barbara County?").
This specification first semi-formally defines an abstract model of
a gazetteer. That model is then used as the basis for defining a
set of services (i.e., a set of network-invokable functions),
several report formats, and a query language.
]]]
The protocol is defined using XML schemas, and it is built on GML
(http://www.opengis.net/gml/), which also uses XML schemas.
Work is currently underway at several organizations creating clients
and servers that use the protocol. Time will tell how the use of XML,
and XML schemas in particular, facilitates the development and use of
such protocols.
More information on gazetteers in general can be found at
http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/gazetteer/
Substantive and stylistic comments welcome,
-Greg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gregory A. Janee CS/Alexandria Digital Library
gjanee@alexandria.ucsb.edu University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
805-893-8453 (voice) 805-893-3045 (fax)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2001 05:38:14 UTC