The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is considering the Zarr v2 Storage Specification for adoption as an official OGC Community Standard. As a part of the Community Standard endorsement process, a new Work Item justification is available for public comment. Comments are due by 11th September 2020.
Zarr stores metadata using .json text files and array data as (optionally) compressed binary chunks. Zarr can store data into most storage systems, including databases, standard ‘directory based’ file systems, and cloud object stores, such as Amazon S3. This flexibility allows implementations to experiment with novel storage technologies while maintaining a uniform API for downstream libraries and users.
According to a report by GIScafe, Zarr has already been adopted by several OGC communities as a format for cloud-optimized, analysis-ready geospatial data. The official standard of OGC is an approved OGC Community Standard. It is considered to be a widely used, mature specification, but was developed outside of OGC’s standards development and approval process. A snapshot of the work is brought to OGC by the originator of the standard. The work is then endorsed by OGC membership so that it can become part of the OGC Standards Baseline.
The proposed Zarr community standard work item justification is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal. Comments are due by 11th September, 2020, and should be submitted via the method outlined on the Zarr community standard work item justification’s public comment request page.
