GML -- DOES IT REALLY WORK IN PRACTICE?

The Geography Markup Language is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium to express spatial features. In geoinformation science it is used as a formal language to describe spatial data structures (recommended by the ISO 19100 series of International Standards in the Geographic Information) and as an open interchange format for spatial data (vector and descriptive data) between different geographic information systems. GML is an XML encoding in compliance with ISO 19118 for the transport and storage of geographic information modelled in accordance with the conceptual modelling framework used in the ISO 19100 series of International Standards and including both the spatial and non-spatial properties of geographic features. The ability to integrate all forms of geographic information is key to the utility of GML. The main purpose of GML is to ensure the interoperable spatial data exchange. However, spatial data exchange with the use of GML format causes many problems in practice. GIS software not always can properly understand data provided in GML standard. In this paper there will be analyzed and discussed the main problems connected with spatial data exchange with the use of GML format in different GIS applications. There will be also presented some proposals of resolving existing problems concerning interoperable spatial data exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]