Re: [Geotools-devel] OpenGIS standards [was GT2 building script under Linux]

[Martin D. <mar...@te...>]

Hello

Artur Hefczyc a =E9crit :
> There are a lot of documents and specs on OpenGIS site.
> Which ones would you recommend to know first?


I think it is usefull to separate OpenGIS specifications in two
categories: abstract specifications and implementation specifications.
Abstract specifications are published first and are quite general.
Implementation specifications come after and sometime target a
particular plateform, e.g.: SQL, CORBA, COM+, etc. A difference between
abstract and implementation specs is that the implementation spec is
more verbose on class attributes and methods. Sometime, the
implementation specs contains less classes than the abstract one. Maybe
the abstract are just some kind of "first draft"? Maybe, at the time of
writing the implementation spec, they realize that not all classes were
essential? I don't know why abstract and implementation specs sometime
differ about some details.


For myself, I do not spend too much attention on abstract specs and
focus rather on implementation specs. Of course, you can't do that if
the implementation specs is not yet available (only a small amount of
abstract specs seem to have an implementation spec at this time).

On the implementation specs side, one possible starting point may be:

Coordinate Transformation Services Implementation Specification

The advantage of this one is that it has no dependencies to any other
specs. From this regard, it is one of the most basic specs. For example,
the "Grid Coverage Implementation Specification" depends on "Coordinate
Transformations", but "Coordinate Transformations" do not depends on
anybody.

 	Regards,

		Martin.