If any of these 10 indicators ring true for your AEC firm, it could be time to modernize
By Lucas Hayden
Legacy technology reminds me a lot of the aging but still reliable car that has faithfully carried me and my family around for the better part of two decades. Much like legacy software, that car reliably gets us from Point A to Point B — usually, at least — it has features that were ahead of their time when they were first released, many of which still work, and although it’s way out of warranty and has its obvious limitations, it does the things it was built to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Because it still runs well enough, it’s familiar, has that vintage feel, and carries some sentimental value, an item like this, whether it’s a car or a software product, can be difficult to say goodbye to. Yet in the case of my trusty old car, I can’t help but wonder what I’ve been missing and what I stand to gain by replacing it with something more modern — the elevated features, capabilities and amenities others are enjoying while I loyally stick with the status quo.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking public comment on the adoption of GeoSPARQL v1.1 as an OGC Standard. OGC GeoSPARQL extends W3C’s SPARQL to provide a geographic query language for RDF data. Comments are due by 11 January, 2023.
Version 1.1 of GeoSPARQL extends the originally published standard in 2012 that is used for representation and querying of geospatial linked data for the Semantic Web in new ways.
SPARQL is one of several key technologies that enable the “Semantic Web” or “Web of data,” where data is published to the Web so that it can be accessed, shared, and reused across applications and users. In other words, in a manner aligned with the FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). SPARQL specifications provide languages and protocols to query and manipulate RDF graph content on the Web or in an RDF store.
Other technologies identified by the W3C Semantic Web Activity as being key to the Semantic Web include the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, which provides a directed, labeled graph data format for representing data on the Web, and the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language, which provides an ontology for the consistent naming and! identification of data.
The OGC GeoSPARQL draft specification complements these technologies by providing a geographic query language for RDF data that contains a spatial component.
