KML? GML? GeoRSS? When should you use what?
Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist of Google, has a blog post, Mass Market Standards, where he discusses what the future may hold for mass media adoption of geospatial XML standards. He invites interested parties to weigh in on the issue of when GML, KML and GeoRSS should be used. I have a few opinions, but join in the conversation.
I’m still a newcomer to this area, but this is how it would split out for me (although I’m happy to see how other’s make the split).
KML: Great for either specialized client/server applications or aggregation systems that then can present segments of the information via a centralized site. When you take the compression of KMZ files, you have a format that can syndicate large amounts of geospatial data. (one file set I work with totals out at 6MB uncompressed)
GeoRSS: My choice (at this point) for getting diverse communities to exchange geospatial information. From my experience in government, I can know that many government entities may already have RSS capabilities. If so, you can show these folks how to use GeoRSS. For groups that have little technical resources, the markup of GeoRSS provides a low level entry point to providing geospatial data.
GML: If the members of your community are GIS specialists, then I would imagine this is the XML flavor of choice. However, it would think (due to the large size of the data sets involved) its use would be limited to synchronization of data from server to server…with each server then providing stripped down data access to a Web client.
tag: GIS, mapping, google earth, google map, GeoRSS, KML, geotagging