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1.7. Glossary

EPSG:
"The "EPSG" namespace prefix refers to the European Petroleum Survey Group geodetic dataset (EPSG), which defines numeric identifiers for many common coordinate reference systems.
EXAMPLE EPSG:4326 refers to WGS 84 geographic latitude, then longitude. That is, in this CRS the X axis corresponds to latitude, and the Y axis to longitude.
" (OGC 2004, p. 10)
Geography Markup Language (GML):
Geography Markup Language (GML) is an XML encoding for the transport and storage of geographic information, including both the geometry and properties of geographic features. It is an open data exchange standard well-suited for transmitting small to medium-sized volumes of information. (Reichhardt 2003)
Interface:
"An interface, in software terms, is software that enables independent systems to act on each other or communicate with each other." (McKee 2001)
Interoperability:
"Interoperability is the ability of products, systems, or business processes to work together to accomplish a common task. The term can be defined in a technical way or in a broad way, taking into account social, political and organizational factors." (Wikipedia)
ISO/TC 211:
ISO/TC 211 is a standard technical committee formed within ths International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information and geomantics. It is responsible for preparation of a series of International Standards and Technical Specifications numbered in the range starting at 19101. (Wikipedia)
Metadata:
Metadata is "data about data". "Metadata is structured, encoded data that describe characteristics of information-bearing entities to aid in the identification, discovery, assessment, and management of the described entities." (Durrell 1985)
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC):
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of 333 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available specifications that support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. (OGC)
OpenGIS:
OpenGIS is a Registered Trademark of the OGC and is the brand name associated with the specifications and documents produced by the OGC. OpenGIS specifications are the main "products" of the OGC and have been developed by the membership to address specific interoperability challenges. Ideally, when specifications are implemented by two different software engineers working independently, the resulting components plug and play, that is they work together without further debugging. (OGC)
Request for Comments:
In internetworking and computer network engineering, Request for Comments (RFC) documents are a series of memoranda encompassing new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to Internet technologies.
Styled Layer Descriptor:
The OpenGIS Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) Implementation Specification is an encoding that extends the Web Map Service specification to allow user-defined symbolization of feature data. It allows users (or other systems) to determine which features or layers are rendered with which colours or symbols. (OGC)
Uniform Resource Locator (URL):
A URL is compact string of characters used to identify a resource. It enables interaction with representation of the resource over a network using specific protocols (Wikipedia).
Web Feature Service:
Web Feature Service is an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the Internet using platform-independent calls (the result is a GML-file). Geographical features can be thought of as the "source code" behind the map, whereas the WMS interface returns only an image, which can not be edited or spatially analyzed. (Wikipedia)
Web Mapping:
Web mapping is viewing geographic information over the World Wide Web, including the presentation of general purpose maps to display locations and geographic backdrops. (Whatis.com)
Web Map Service:
Web Mapping Service is a standard that provides a standard interface for querying and accessing map layers from a mapping server. The result of this query is a raster image.
XML:
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language and is a simple, very flexible text format derived from Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere. (WWW-Consortium)


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