Support for ISO and OGC Standards

ESRI fully encompasses Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) specifications and standards as well as comprehensive IT standards such as those related to ISO, W3C, ANSI, CEN, and many other leading de-facto industry standards. This includes adherence to and leadership work in areas such as XML, SOAP, SQL, etc.

ESRI's goal is to support appropriate specifications as they become finalized and to participate in the development of GIS standards via active participation in ISO and OGC. By serving in leadership roles in many of the programs and specification efforts of both the ISO TC211 committees and the OGC initiatives, ESRI is able to contribute knowledge in interoperability and ensure the realization of standards compliance in ESRI software products.

ESRI is a Principal member of Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) and active in the organization including their Board of Directors and Planning and Technical Committees. ESRI staff participation in OCG Programs, testbeds, pilot projects, and specification initiatives includes:

• Standards, Interoperability, and Community Outreach and Adoption programs
• Chairing/Co-chairing many OGC Working Groups
• As editors of the Open Location Services (OpenLS) and OGC Simple Features specifications

ESRI Canada is a Technical member of the OGC and participates actively in programs and initiative of interest in Canada.

ESRI actively participates in ISO TC 211. ESRI is able to represent the US in ISO TC 211 through its membership in ANSI-INCITS L1. ESRI participates both in the development of the standards and through using the standards in our products and services. ESRI has taken a leadership role in the development of the following standards:

• ISO 19115 Metadata
• ISO 19125 Simple Feature Access - Parts 1 & 2
• ISO 19139 Metadata XML Schema Implementation
• ISO 19115-2 Metadata - Extension for imagery

For a comprehensive list of all OGC specifications and ISO/TC211 geographic information standards supported by ESRI, download the following PDF document of view the tables in an HTML format:

• ESRI-Supported Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., and ISO Standards [PDF-318 KB, 11 pages]
• Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., and ISO Standards Tables [Link]

In addition, ESRI supports and participates in other major international and U.S. GIS standards and interoperability organizations. ESRI actively supports:

ESRI Canada actively follows:

White Paper

GIS Standards and Interoperability (ESRI Canada Technical Paper) [PDF-830 KB, 16 pages]