6 August 2013 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) seeks publiccomments on the current draft of the candidate OGC GeoPackage (GPKG) Standard.The GPKG Standards Working Group (SWG) will consider all submitted commentswhen they prepare a final draft of the GeoPackage Standard.

The candidate OGC GeoPackage Standard provides an open,non-proprietary, platform-independent SQLitecontainer for distribution and direct use of all kinds of geospatial data,including vector features and tile matrix sets. GeoPackage can be used by mobile device users who require geospatialapplication services and associated data in disconnected or limited networkconnectivity environments where open, sharable geospatial data to support theirapplications is frequently unavailable. GeoPackage supports applications that involvecreation of geospatial data products in enterprise computing environments, dataproduct distribution to other computing environments, mobile workforce datacapture and updates, and volunteered geographic information.

The GeoPackage container and related GPKG SQLite Extensionconfiguration and API will increase the cross-platform interoperability ofgeospatial applications and web services in the mobile world.  Standard configuration and APIs for accessand management of GeoPackage data will provide consistent query and updateresults across such applications and services. 

All OGC standards are free and publicly available. Download the candidate GeoPackage Standard. Comments are due by 5 September 2013. 

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies,government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating ina consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGCStandards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web,wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empowertechnology developers to make geospatial information and services accessibleand useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. OGC isalso releasing the GeoPackage spec on GitHub. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

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8 January 2013 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) seeks publiccomments on the current draft ofthe candidate OGC GeoPackage (GPKG) Standard. The GPKG Standards Working Group willconsider all comments when preparing a final draft of the candidate standard. 

Mobile device users who require geospatial application services andassociated data and who operate in disconnected or limited network connectivityenvironments frequently do not have open, available geospatial data to support theirapplications. Applications include such things as mobile workforce data captureand updates, volunteered geographic information, and real time annotations ofmap data in an emergency event.

The candidate OGC GeoPackage (GPKG) Standard provides an open,non-proprietary, platform-independent container for distribution and direct useof all kinds of geospatial data. The GeoPackage container and related API willincrease the cross-platform interoperability of geospatial applications and webservices in the mobile world.  StandardAPIs for access and management of GeoPackage data will provide consistent queryand update results across such applications and services. 

Future enhancements to the GeoPackage standard, a future GeoPackageWeb Service standard, and modifications to existing OGC Web Service (OWS)standards to use GeoPackages as exchange formats will allow OWS to supportprovisioning of GeoPackages throughout an enterprise or information community.

Interoperability of GeoPackage implementations by several participantsis being tested and will be demonstrated in the 15 January 2013 OGC Web Services Testbed (OWS-9)Demonstration. The current reference implementation bases, SQLite and SpatiaLite, areopen source resources developed by OGC members. The SQLite referenceimplementation is sponsored in part by the SQLite Consortium, which includes anumber of OGC members. SpatiaLite is built on OS-Geo open source libraries bythe president of GFOSS.it and others.

The current draft of the candidate OGC GeoPackage (GPKG) Standard can bedownloaded from http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/95.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies,government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating ina consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGCStandards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web,wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empowertechnology developers to make geospatial information and services accessibleand useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visitthe OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

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