ESRI Continues Open Strategy

First Vendor to Pass OGC Conformance Test

In its ongoing commitment to develop interoperable GIS software, ESRI has worked with a number of standards organizations including the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Federal Geographic Data Committee, International Standards Organization, and American National Standards Institute. As part of the Open GIS process, ESRI has actively worked to develop the Open GIS Simple Features Specification for SQL in cooperation with other organizations involved in spatial data management. This specification defines interface specifications for the storage and management of geographic features in a database management system.

ESRI was the first vendor to complete the conformance tests with fully functional, commercial off-the-shelf software. ESRI's Spatial Database Engine (SDE) Version 3.0.2 was used to illustrate compliance for the Simple Features Specification for SQL using normalized schema and SQL data types and data functions on Oracle, IBM DB2 DataJoiner, and Informix. Actions that reflect ESRI's open strategy include:

• Open SDE application program interface
• Published shapefile--now a de facto industry standard
• Helped create the vector product format
• Full support of Spatial Data Transfer Standard in ArcInfo and ArcView GIS
• First vendor to pass the OGC conformance test