Big Data Standardization

Standards establish interoperability, making tools work together across vendors, platforms, and applications. While the field of Big Data is large and diverse (and the term "Big Data" in itself rather vague) there are indeed facets that have matured sufficiently to allow for common standards.

The standards we have shaped or are contributing to serve two purposes. On the one hand, standards - as said above - help achieving interoperability. Equally important in practice, they condense best practices (for example, in serving massive spatio-temporal geo data) and thereby give guidance to implementers.

Our group, represented by its group head Peter Baumann, is actively shaping Big Data related standards on massive multi-dimensional arrays in ISO SQL (sometimes nicknamed "Science SQL" - which is not quite correct, as arrays occur also in engineering and business data) and scalable geo services, such as the WCPS geo-raster filtering and processing language.

Standards developed by our group have high industry impact, they are implemented by both commercial vendors (such as ESRI, P) and open-source projects (like MapServer and GeoServer).

ISO

Functions:

• German delegate, ISO/IEC JTC1 / SC32 / WG3 SQL and member, DIN NIA
• German expert (DIN delegate) in JTC1 Study Group on Big Data
• liaison representative for OGC in TC211 Geographic information/Geom atics WG6 - Imagery

Output:

• ISO 9075 SQL Part 15: MDA (Multi-Dimensional Arrays) (adopted; initiated and written by us)
• ISO 19123-1, (adopted), ISO 19123-2 (adopted), ISO 19123-3 (adopted)

Open Geospatial Consortium

Functions:

• founder and co-chair (with John Herring, Oracle and Chuck Heazel, WISC), Big Data Domain Working Group (BigData.DWG)
• co-chair (with Stephan Meissl, EOX), Web Coverage Service (WCS) Standards Working Group (WCS.SWG)
• co-chair (with Stephan Meissl, EOX), Coverages Domain Working Group (Coverages.DWG)
• co-founder (with Chris Little, UK MetOffice), Temporal Domain Working Group (Temporal.DWG)

Output are spatio-temporal geo datacube standards in particular, but also further results beyond (see OGC coverage standards showcase illustrating n-D geo raster standards, based on rasdaman):

• editor, OGC Coverage Implementation Schema, an interoperable, fully testable information model for spatio-temporal regular and irregular grids, point clouds, and meshes
• editor, OGC Web Coverage Service, a standards suite for flexible, scalable services on multi-dimensional spatio-temporal data, such as 2-D satellite imagery, 3D image timeseries, and 4-D weather data (rasdaman is WCS Core Reference Implementation)
• Web Coverage Processing Service, a high-level domain query language for spatio-temporal datacubes

Further Standardization and Collaboration Bodies

In addition, the group head, Peter Baumann, is engaged in several further bodies:

• Research Data Alliance:
  • founder and co-chair, Array Database Assessment Working Group
  • co-chair, Big Data Interest Group
  • co-chair, Geospatial Interest Group
• member, ERCIM Expert Group Big Data
• German delegate, Belmont Forum WP 3 Harmonization of global data infrastructure for sharing environmental data
• Charter Member, Open-Source Geospatial F oundation (OSGeo)
• council member, Commission for the Man agement and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)
• member, Object Database Management Systems (ODBMS) expert panel
• Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)
• founding member and secretary, CODATA Germany
• member, advisory board, GDI-HB (state geo data infrastructure for Bremen)
• representative of Jacobs University in Verein zur Förderung der Geoinformatik in Norddeutschland e. V.