Interoperability in Practice: Problems in Semantic Conversion from Current Technology to OpenGIS

This work investigates the practical issue of mapping existing GIS to the OpenGIS standards. We describe the data models used in three systems (MGE, ARC/INFO and SPRING) and analyse the problems involved when mapping them to OpenGIS. Our conclusion is that the OpenGIS standard has not been defined in a formal and unequivocal way, and therefore, there are indefinitions and competing alternatives for mapping existing GIS systems into the proposed standard.