The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce that its Membership has approved OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) – Part 2: Publish-Subscribe Workflow as an official OGC Standard.
The OGC API – EDR Standard offers a simple, well-defined, and uniform web interface for accessing a wide range of environmental and other data. It allows users to retrieve the data they need without having to manage the complexities of underlying data storage technologies.
OGC API – EDR is a multi-part Standard. Part 2 of the Standard provides recommendations for integrating Publish-Subscribe (PubSub) architectural patterns into OGC API implementations, enabling seamless event-driven applications. By setting tailored requirements for PubSub patterns, this new standard enhances real-time data workflows and ensures efficient, automatic updates of environmental or other data. The Publish-Subscribe architecture assumes reasonable connectivity, but can also operate under favorable Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, or Limited (DDIL) communication conditions.
Part 2 of OGC API – EDR builds on the strengths and capabilities of Part 1. For example, whereas Part 1 specified the means of describing an EDR API through an OpenAPI definition, Part 2 specifies the means of describing publish-subscribe capabilities of the API through an AsyncAPI definition. The Standard is therefore expected to be interoperable with many platforms and protocols that make use of these technologies.
The OGC API – EDR Standard supports a full range of use cases: from retrieving time-series observations to sub-setting multi-dimensional data cubes along user-supplied sampling geometries. Such sampling geometries are provided by a client through query patterns that use a set of common parameters. These query patterns provide useful building blocks to allow the composition of APIs that satisfy a wide range of geospatial data use cases. By defining a small set of query patterns, the OGC API – EDR Standard helps to simplify the design of systems, as they can be performance-tuned for the supported queries – thus making it easier to build robust and scalable infrastructure.
OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval – Part 2: Publish-Subscribe Workflow is the outcome of the work and dedication of the Environmental Data Retrieval API Standards Working Group. We thank the members of the OGC Meteorology and Oceanography Domain Working Group, as well as Clemens Portele and all contributors of change requests and comments. Development of the Standard was led by:
Editors:
- Tom Kralidis, Meteorological Service of Canada
- Chris Little, UK Met Office
- Mark Burgoyne, UK Met Office
- Steve Olson, National Weather Service at NOAA
- Shane Mill, National Weather Service at NOAA
OGC Members interested in staying up to date on the progress of this Standard, or contributing to its development, are encouraged to join the Environmental Data Retrieval API Standards Working Group (SWG) via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.
The Standard is managed in the public OGC API Environmental Data Retrieval GitHub repository, where issues can be submitted and tracked.
As with any OGC Standard, the OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval – Part 2: Publish-Subscribe Workflow Standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can learn more on the OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval Standard webpage. To help users implement the OGC API – EDR Standard, an OpenAPI definition document and schema definition files have been published, alongside the Standard, on the OGC API – EDR webpage.