[OGC Press Release] The OGC(R) Announces New Call for Participation in OWS-5 Testbed

[OGC Press Release]

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information about this announcement, contact:

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach at opengeospatial.org

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September 7, 2007, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC®) has issued an addendum to its May 11 Request for
Quotes/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) for the OGC Web Services,
Phase 5 (OWS-5) Interoperability Initiative. OWS-5 is a testbed to
advance OGC's open geospatial interoperability framework. The
addendum and the original RFQ/CFP are available at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/43.

As described in the addendum, in response to sponsor requirements the
OWS-5 initiative's Agile Geography thread has been expanded to
include two new work items. The new work items are titled
"Federated Geo-synchronization Services" and "OWS Core
+ Extensions Experiment". In the Federated Geo-synchronization
work, participants will help develop standard approaches to using GML
application schemas such as GeoRSS GML and GML Simple Features Level 0
with Atom and the Atom Publishing Protocol. Atom addresses the
syndication of Web content such as weblogs and news headlines to Web
sites as well as directly to user agents. The OWS Core + Extensions
work item involves participants implementing a more formal and modular
approach to structuring OGC standards.

The RFQ/CFP includes details of these work items. Responses are due by
October 5, 2007. If your organization is interested in participating,
contact Raj Singh at rsingh at opengeospatial.org.

OWS testbeds are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global,
hands-on and collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly
develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into
OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public
release. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international
teams of technology providers work together to solve specific
geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative's
sponsoring organizations.

The OGC® is an international industry consortium of more than 350
companies, government agencies, research organizations, and
universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly
available interface specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications
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. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.