Spatial Archive and Interchange Format: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:35, 24 November 2010

Revision as of 05:49, 24 November 2010

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== History ==

The SAIF project was established as a means of addressing interoperability between different geographic information systems. Exchange formats of particular prominence at the time included [http://www.gwg.nga.mil/ntb/baseline/docs/digest/part1.pdf DIGEST] (Digital Geographic Information Exchange Standard) and [http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/ [SDTS]] (Spatial Data Transfer Specification). These were considered as too inflexible and difficult to use. Consequently, the Government of British Columbia decided to develop SAIF and to put it forward as a national standard in Canada.

SAIF became a Canadian national standard in 1993 with the approval of the Canadian General Standards Board. The last version of SAIF, published in January 1995, is designated as [http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/64080/publication.html CGIS-SAIF Canadian Geomatics Interchange Standard: Spatial Archive and Interchange Format: Formal Definition (Release 3.2)], issue CAN/CGSB-171.1-95, catalogue number P29-171-001-1995E.

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The work on the SAIF modeling paradigm and the CSN classes was carried out principally by Mark Sondheim, Henry Kucera and Peter Friesen, all with the British Columbia government at the time. Dale Lutz and Don Murray of [http://www.safe.com/reader_writerPDF/saif.pdf Safe Software] developed the Object Syntax Notation and the [http://www.safe.com/reader_writerPDF/saif.pdf Reader and Writer] software that became part of the Feature Manipulation Engine.

SAIF was brought to the attention of Michael Stonebraker and Kenn Gardels of the University of California at Berkeley, and then to those working on the initial version of the Open Geospatial Interoperability Specification (OGIS), the first efforts of what became the [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ [Open Geospatial Consortium]] (OGC). A series of 18 submissions to the ISO SQL Multimedia working group also helped tie SAIF to the original ISO work on geospatial features.

Today SAIF is of historical interest only. It is significant as a precursor to the [Geography Markup Language|Geography Markup Language]] and as the formative element in the development of the widely used Feature Manipulation Engine.

== References ==