The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) seeks public comment on the draft OGC Table Joining Service (TJS) Interface Standard. This standard defines an interface for services that provide the ability to join attribute data stored in one database on a network with the orresponding geometry (points, lines, or polygons) stored in another network accessible database.

For example, a table on one server may indicate the population of various cities, while a second server may contain the geometry that describes the cities‘ locations and boundaries. The TJS standard describes a set of interfaces for both servers that would allow the city name to be used as the „common geographic identifier“ in order to join the population data to its geometry, thus enabling the user to create a map or perform geospatial analysis on the tabular data. An earlier draft of this specification was called the „Geographic Linkage Service“.

The proposed OGC TJS 1.0 standard and information on submitting comments on this document are available here. The public comment period closes on 14 April, 2010.