The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) is seeking comments on the OGC OWS (OGC Web Services) Context Conceptual Model and the associated ATOM Extension document candidate standards.

The OGC OWS Context Conceptual Model describes the use cases, requirements and conceptual data model of an OGC Web Services Context Document. A context document (OWS Context) defines a fully configured set of OGC services to be consistently shared, interpreted and invoked by clients. This standard model is a core model that can be extended and encoded as defined in extensions to the standard, such as the ATOM Extension and the JSON Extension, which has not yet been released.

An OGC Web Services Context Document (OWS Context) enables a set of configured information resources (service set) to be passed between applications as a collection of services. OWS Context supports in-line content as well. This candidate standard supports use cases such as the distribution of search results and the exchange of a set of resources such as OGC Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Map Service (WMS), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS), Web Coverage Service (WCS) or others to provide multiple users with a ‘common operating picture’. Additionally OWS Context can deliver a set of configured processing services (Web Processing Service (WPS)) parameters to allow processing to be reproduced on different nodes.

The OGC OWS Context Conceptual Model and the associated ATOM Extension document candidate standards are available for public review and comment at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/96. Comments are due by 17 February 2012.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC 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. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.