On geolocation, sensors and international standards

[Martin Desruisseaux]

Hello all

This is my first post on the JavaFX mailing list. To present myself briefly, I'm 
doing Java programming since 1997. Before that, I have done 7 years of C/C++ and 
a bit of Fortran, MatLab and assembler.

In the "/New Features Proposed for JavaFX/" section from the 
http://javafx.com/roadmap/ page, we can read "/New UI controls, including (...) 
Map control are under consideration/" and "/JavaFX will incorporate support for 
on-device sensors, including (...) geo-location/". I have also read about a 
JavaFX demo running on mobile device in a previous JavaOne meeting. Some members 
(including myself) from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are very interested 
in those geo-location and sensor eventualities - while I understand it is not 
yet committed plan.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (http://www.opengeospatial.org) is an 
international industry consortium of 444 companies, government agencies and 
universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available 
interface standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that 
"geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. 
Oracle is a principal member of OGC and has been a key player in the development 
of ISO 19107 (spatial geometry schema) among others.

The GeoAPI project (http://www.geoapi.org) is an OGC working group that 
translate the OGC/ISO specifications into Java interfaces, and interpret those 
standards in an effort to meet the expectation of Java developers (naming 
conventions, integration with existing JDK API, etc.). In addition, the GeoAPI 
project provides a test suite allowing any GeoAPI implementations to run parts 
of the Geospatial Integrity of Geoscience Software tests 
(http://www.epsg.org/gigs.html) and some other tests.

I suspect that JavaFX is aiming for something simpler than OGC/ISO standards. 
However, I wonder if it could be done as a profile of existing international 
standards, in collaboration with OGC working groups. I have been asked to 
modularize GeoAPI, and would be happy to work in collaboration with any JavaFX 
developer working on Map or Sensor API. Oracle has a strong vote power at OGC, 
since John Herring (an Oracle employee) is presents to most meetings.

If there is any interest for JavaFX/OGC join work, maybe a possible approach 
would be to create a wiki page where some peoples list the desired functionality 
for Map and Sensor controls, and myself listing the elements from OGC/ISO 
standards that aim to provide those functionality? Then the complexity of those 
elements would be evaluated, and an eventually simplified profile proposed - 
trying to keep extension points so that users who need the full functionality 
(e.g. map projections) can still get it.

As a side note, some of those OGC/ISO standards become European laws through the 
INSPIRE program. While a fully INSPIRE-compliant API is probably out of scope 
for JavaFX, I think that a JavaFX API consistent with the most basic OGC/ISO 
elements would have great value.

Any though?

     Regards

         Martin Desruisseaux