IJGIS Theme Issue on Interoperability, Volume 12 Number 4, June 1998, pp.403-425 ISSUES AND PROSPECTS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE SPATIAL DATA TRANSFER STANDARD (SDTS) AUTHORS David Arctur, Ph.D. (author for correspondence) Laser-Scan, Inc. 45635 Willow Pond Plaza, Sterling, Virginia, 20164-4457 USA
[email protected] David Hair EROS Data Center, U.S. Geological Survey Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA
[email protected] George Timson Mid-Continent Mapping Center, U.S. Geological Survey Rolla, Missouri, USA
[email protected] E. Paul Martin Rocky Mountain Mapping Center, U.S. Geological Survey Denver, Colorado, USA
[email protected] Robin Fegeas National Mapping Division, U.S. Geological Survey Reston, Virginia, USA
[email protected] KEYWORDS SDTS, OpenGIS, Object-Oriented, Data Sharing/Exchange, Standards SHORT TITLE Issues and Prospects for SDTS ISSN 1365-8816 IJGIS Theme Issue on Interoperability, Volume 12 Number 4, June 1998, pp.403-425 ISSUES AND PROSPECTS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE SPATIAL DATA TRANSFER STANDARD (SDTS) D. Arctur R. Fegeas, D. Hair, G. Timson, E. Martin Laser-Scan Inc. US Geological Survey ABSTRACT The Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS) was designed to be capable of representing virtually any data model, rather than being a prescription for a single data model. It has fallen short of this ambitious goal for a number of reasons, which this paper investigates. In addition to issues that might have been anticipated in its design, a number of new issues have arisen since its initial development. These include the need to support explicit feature definitions, incremental update, value-added extensions, and change tracking within large, national databases.