The candidate GLS standard defines an interface for services that provide the ability to "link" data that contain information about geographic objects, such as census tract population statistics, with data in another repository that contains the actual geometry (points, lines, polygons). For example, a table of populations of cities on one server may not contain the geometry information that describes the cities' locations and boundaries, while a second server may house the cities' geometry. The candidate GLS standard describes a set of interfaces for both servers that lets the city name be used as a "common geographic identifier" to join the population data to its geometry, so the user can create a map or perform geospatial analysis on the linked data.

The 30 day public comment period begins January 30, 2009 and ends March 1, 2009. After the OGC's GLS Standards Working Group has addressed comments received in response to the RFC, the draft standard will be submitted to the OGC Technical Committee and Planning Committee for their review and possible approval as an adopted OGC Standard.

The RFC can be downloaded from www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/53. Comments are due by March 1, 2009.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

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