Surveying, Mapping and GIS

Over the last few years, there has been an ever-increasing number of applications which rely on geocoding of some form or another. Additionally, geocoding providers are making geocoding services available at a number of different levels of service, such as street-level or zipcode-level service.

It seems to me that it would make sense to pursue standardization of geocoding services, by way of XML and web services standard, much as OGC has already done with GML. This would allow applications developers a means of developing components which use third-party geocoding engines to potentially mesh with customers’ existing geocoding providers to allow their customers to leverage their investment, as well as opening up new markets with customers who may be using different geocoding services.

If OGC has not already looked into this, it would certainly be a worthwhile discussion.