ABSTRACT
Geospatial content is stored in a variety of systems and formats. Different projects from architecture, engineering, and construction applications are maintained in software-dependent file formats. The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Inc. is developing standards that enable open, vendor, and format-neutral geo-information discovery, access, and sharing and application deployment. Another significant development related to geospatial content is the provision of interoperable services that allow seamless combination of spatial information from multiple, distributed sources. The OGC is a global voluntary consensus standards organization that envisions a world in which everyone benefits from geographic information and services are made available across any network, application, or platform. Inherent in this vision is the requirement for geospatial standards and strategies to be an integral part of business process and enterprise architectures. The abstract model that provides the foundation or lingua franca of all the OGC standards work is called the OGC Abstract Specification.
