I agree with you, Andrew!
We should avoid "mental barriers" like Raster Vs
Vector, as well as Coverage Vs Feature (the new
version of the same contraposition).
In an interoperable Geospatial Information
framework, Observation&Measurement, Feature and
Coverage are different ways to see the same stuff (i.e. they are views).
Different use cases may need to present users
with a Feature view and access and process data
using a Coverage view, or vice versa.
--Stefano
touche!
Too many people forget the case of a feature
with (possibly multiple) coverage-valued
properties. When scientific people complain that
this ISO/OGC stuff "is just GIS" I robustly
respond that actually the concepts are as
revolutionary to traditional GIS as to us
scientific users. Let's please leave behind
these old notions of "raster" vs "vector", and
realise that actually we can model the world in
whatever complex way is necessary.
