License Agreement

Permission is hereby granted by the Open Geospatial Consortium, ("Licensor"), free of charge and subject to the terms set forth below, to any person obtaining a copy of this Intellectual Property and any associated documentation, to deal in the Intellectual Property without restriction (except as set forth below), including without limitation the rights to implement, use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sublicense copies of the Intellectual Property, and to permit persons to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished to do so, provided that all copyright notices on the intellectual property are retained intact and that each person to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished agrees to the terms of this Agreement.

If you modify the Intellectual Property, all copies of the modified Intellectual Property must include, in addition to the above copyright notice, a notice that the Intellectual Property includes modifications that have not been approved or adopted by LICENSOR.

THIS LICENSE IS A COPYRIGHT LICENSE ONLY, AND DOES NOT CONVEY ANY RIGHTS UNDER ANY PATENTS THAT MAY BE IN FORCE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR HOLDERS INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR THAT THE OPERATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. ANY USE OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SHALL BE MADE ENTIRELY AT THE USER’S OWN RISK. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR ANY CONTRIBUTOR OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS TO THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, OR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM ANY ALLEGED INFRINGEMENT OR ANY LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION, USE, COMMERCIALIZATION OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

This license is effective until terminated. You may terminate it at any time by destroying the Intellectual Property together with all copies in any form. The license will also terminate if you fail to comply with any term or condition of this Agreement. Except as provided in the following sentence, no such termination of this license shall require the termination of any third party end-user sublicense to the Intellectual Property which is in force as of the date of notice of such termination. In addition, should the Intellectual Property, or the operation of the Intellectual Property, infringe, or in LICENSOR’s sole opinion be likely to infringe, any patent, copyright, trademark or other right of a third party, you agree that LICENSOR, in its sole discretion, may terminate this license without any compensation or liability to you, your licensees or any other party. You agree upon termination of any kind to destroy or cause to be destroyed the Intellectual Property together with all copies in any form, whether held by you or by any third party.

Except as contained in this notice, the name of LICENSOR or of any other holder of a copyright in all or part of the Intellectual Property shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Intellectual Property without prior written authorization of LICENSOR or such copyright holder. LICENSOR is and shall at all times be the sole entity that may authorize you or any third party to use certification marks, trademarks or other special designations to indicate compliance with any LICENSOR standards or specifications. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The application to this Agreement of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is hereby expressly excluded. In the event any provision of this Agreement shall be deemed unenforceable, void or invalid, such provision shall be modified so as to make it valid and enforceable, and as so modified the entire Agreement shall remain in full force and effect. No decision, action or inaction by LICENSOR shall be construed to be a waiver of any rights or remedies available to it.


 

i. Abstract

This white paper provides an overview of the OGC compliance process, benefits for users who acquire OGC compliant products, and guidance regarding language to specify requirements for OGC compliant and implementing products in software acquisition (procurement) documents.

ii. Keywords

OGC standards, ogc documents, ogcdoc, compliance, certification, implementation, procurement

iii. Preface

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) provides international standards that are implemented worldwide in thousands of applications that use location information. To reduce the risk of applications not implementing a standard correctly, the OGC provides a compliance process for testing and certifying implementations. OGC certification provides substantial evidence that an implementation that is claimed to have implemented an OGC standard will interoperate as specified and in the same manner as other compliant implementations, regardless of who developed them. This white paper provides guidance regarding language to specify requirements for OGC compliant and implementing products in software acquisition (procurement) documents.

iv. Submitting organizations

The following organizations submitted this Document to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC):

Open Geospatial Consortium

v. Submitters

All questions regarding this submission should be directed to the editor or the submitters:

Name Representing

Luis Bermudez

OGC

Lance McKee

OGC

Why OGC Compliance?

OGC standards are implemented worldwide. However, not all of these implementations are certified as compliant by the OGC[1]. The implementation of open standards that enable interoperability benefits the general public. This benefit can be greatly diminished if the standards are not consistently and correctly implemented.

Acquiring OGC compliant products helps minimize the delay, cost, and frustration of having to rework disparate implementations that claim to implement the same interoperability standard yet fail to interoperate. A buyer or user who acquires an OGC compliant product gains added confidence that the implementation will interoperate with other products that comply with the compatible OGC standard.

OGC Compliance Process

The diagram below provides an overview of the process that organizations (usually technology providers) go through to obtain OGC certification.

                       

The first step is to implement an OGC standard in a product. Then the product is tested using the OGC online free testing facility. This process can help to improve the product. Once the product passes the compliance test, the organization can request OGC compliance certification. After the OGC has completed its review the OGC issues a Trademark License that entitles the organization to use the  “Certified OGC Compliant” mark on the product and in marketing materials. The organization can then claim that the product is compliant, conformant or certified,to a specific standard.

How to verify that a product is compliant

Anybody, particularly potential buyers, can determine if a product complies with a particular OGC standard by searching the OGC Compliance Database at: http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/compliant.  Compliant products are shown in a green font, as shown in the figure.

In the database, every compliant product links to an associated compliant badge, as shown in the figure. The badge contains the name of the organization, the name of the product, and the standards for which the product has passed compliance tests.

If an organization claims that a product implementsan OGC standard, it might fulfill the requirements defined in the standard. The organization may register the product at OGC’s implementation products public database. In contrast to complaint products, OGC makes no assertions about the correctness of these implementations.

How to ask for OGC compliance in your procurement language

The OGC position is that organizations seeking to acquire interoperable geospatial technology products can benefit from the inclusion of specific language in their procurement documents such as tenders, requests for quotes (RFQs) and requests for proposals (RFPs). This language should explain the purchaser’s interoperability needs for OGC-compliant offerings, including any requirements for particular standard (e.g. encodings or interfaces).

Ideally a specific OGC standard will be available to meet every interoperability need. However, compliance tests are not available for every OGC standard. Requiring or favoring an “Implementing Product” may be the most a buyer can hope for in cases where the OGC has not yet provided a compliance certification test.

Below is an illustration of text that could be included in procurement documents in situations where OGC-compliance is one of several evaluation criteria being considered. The table entries should be reduced to only include those standards required to satisfy the requirements of the desired system.

“Evaluation Criterion #n: OGC-compliance

Purchaser seeks geospatial products (systems, components or services) that provide maximum interoperability with purchaser’s and data sharing partner’s systems. To accomplish this, purchaser seeks to make maximum use of open standards provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), ISO, and [list of other standards, profiles or recommendations].

Products that have earned OGC Certification for the standards listed in the table below will score more favorably on this evaluation criterion. To qualify for this criterion, certification licenses must be valid prior to [date] before the project commencement.

Technology Type Encoding Standard Interface Standard

Data Access

GML 2.0, 3.2.1

WFS 1.1, WFS 2.0

Data Visualization

KML 2.2

WMS 1.3

Sensor Data Sharing

 

SOS 2.0

 

Products that have implemented the standards listed in the table below will score more favorably on this evaluation criterion. To qualify for this criterion, product must be listed in the OGC Implementing Products database.

http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products

Technology Type Encoding Standard Interface Standard

Sensor Data Sharing

SensorML 2.0, O&M 2.0

 

The OGC Testing Facility web page (http://cite.opengeospatial.org/teamengine) lists the OGC standards for which certification tests are available and explains the procedure for running those tests.

To learn more about the OGC Compliance Program, email the OGC Compliance Team .

About the Authors:

Luis Bermudez is the Executive Director of Compliance and E-Learning for the OGC. He is based near Washington, DC.

Lance McKee is Senior Staff Writer for the OGC.

References

OGC implementation and compliance database: http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/compliant

OGC free online test facility: http://cite.opengeospatial.org/teamengine/

OGC implementation database registration: http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/registration


[1] Please see http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/faq#14 for definitions of “comply”, “implementing”, and “conformance”.