Spatial Archive and Interchange Format: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:06, 9 March 2019

Revision as of 02:54, 18 August 2019

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The Spatial Archive and Interchange Format (SAIF, pronounced ''safe'') was defined in the early [[1990s]] as a self-describing, extensible format designed to support interoperability and storage of [[Geographic data and information|geospatial data]].

'''SAIF Dataset'''

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'''Object Referencing'''

Object referencing can be used as a means of breaking up large monolithic structures. More significantly, it can allow objects to be defined only once and then referenced any number of times. A section of the geometry of the land-water interface could define part of a [[Coast|coastlinecoast]]line as well as part of a [[Municipality|municipal]] boundary and part of a [[Marine park|marine park]] boundary. This geometric feature can be defined and given an object reference, which is then used when the geometry of the coastline, municipality and marine park are specified.

'''Multimedia'''

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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 [[SDTS]] (Spatial Data Transfer Specification, later accepted as the Spatial Data Transfer Standard). These were considered as too inflexible and difficult to use. Consequently, the [[Executive Council of British Columbia|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.

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 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.