ESRI continues to maintain a leadership role in the OpenLS initiative as members of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) voted to release the specification to the public on April 11, 2003, in Orleans, France. The OGC OpenLS specification defines interface protocols for a set of core services, the building blocks for location-based service (LBS) applications. ESRI is a principle sponsor of the OpenLS initiative under which these specifications were developed and is among the first geoserver vendors to implement an OpenLS platform. In an open and integrated environment, interfaces between different components rely heavily on standardization. ESRI is not only providing an OpenLS platform but also conforms to the Location Interoperability Forum-Mobile Location Protocol (LIF-MLP). MLP is a global industry standard that defines a common interface that facilitates the exchange of location information between mobile networks and location-based applications.
Other LBS industry standards and technology groups in which ESRI participates include the expert group for the Java Community Process (JCP) JSR 179 Location API for Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). The API is designed to be compact and generic and is able to produce information about the present geographic location of resource-limited handheld devices and relay it to Java applications. ESRI remains strongly committed to leveraging open and interoperable standards, thereby ensuring that its user community can locate, understand, and use data and services to share knowledge, optimize decisions, and communicate more effectively.
