ABSTRACT
This chapter collects the interoperability issues discussed in the previous chapter and identifies some fundamental interoperability impediments of spatial data. Spatial data interoperability or geodata interoperability is referred to as “the ability to freely exchange all kinds of spatial information about the Earth and about objects and phenomena on, above, and below the Earth’s surface; and to cooperatively, over networks, run software capable of manipulating such information” (Buehler & McKee, 1996, p. x). This means that the two key elements are:
• information exchange • cooperative and distributed data management
The latter objective is actually a special form of information exchange. Co-operative and distributed data management means that there is bi-or even multi-directional information exchange in the sense that, for example, a data user might also update a remote data source in addition to simple querying.
