News update
April 2008
DNF Roadshow - Cardiff Millennium Stadium 7 May 2008
REGISTER NOW Click here.
This year’s event will see the return of the DNF Forum – a meeting area dedicated to allow conference delegates and exhibition visitors to share their experiences in joined up use of geographic and business information.
Throughout the 3 day event, the DNF Forum will feature three ways for the visitors to get involved. Firstly, there will be a series of short presentations, quite separate to the conference programme, where practitioners of DNF can share their experiences. Secondly, visitors will be offered a series of demonstrations from a mix of users, system suppliers and data providers showing how DNF principles have helped them develop their products and systems. Lastly, the Forum will offer an informal and friendly meeting environment for everyone to come along to simply discuss their needs with the resident DNF experts.
Out on the exhibition show floor, DNF will be equally prominent. DNF will have its own exhibition stand – a new development for this year’s event – to make DNF more accessible to visitors. There will be an innovative DNF Trail linking those exhibitors that have made use of DNF in developing their offerings. Visitors will be encouraged to complete the Trail – collecting a piece of a jigsaw puzzle at each participating exhibitor. On completing their puzzle, by visiting the DNF Forum, each visitor will be rewarded with a prize to leave a lasting reminder of DNF. Last year over 200 visitors completed the DNF Trail and it is expected to be even more popular this time around.
If you would like to participate in the Forum or Trail, click here for more information.
New case study sails in from overseas!
The latest case study to join the stable is from the Isle of Wight Council. It details how the Council have used DNF principles in the creation of their highways terrier. To read, or download a pdf version of the case study, click here.
Technical Progress Update
The Technical Group has met three times since the last newsletter and is progressing the development of technical documentation in support of DNF. As reported previously, the documentation structure, in the form of a document map, has been agreed. Processes for controlling and managing documentation have been implemented and templates produced.
The first Technical Guide on Unique Object Identifiers is now available on the Documentation pages. A DNF Registry has now been established to enable the registration of prefixes. Organisations can now register a 4-character code that is unique to them. This can then be used to prefix local identifiers and provide uniqueness in the context of the Digital National Framework. More than 25 organisations have already registered their prefixes.
A document defining the DNF association model and a technical guide on cross-referencing are in preparation. The Technical Group met in early July to review drafts of these key documents.
Feature cataloguing was the subject of a workshop held in early June, the aim of this was to determine the DNF requirement in this area. Following on from this workshop a sub-group is being established under the Technical Group to develop a Technical Guide.
An overview document is also in preparation and to this end, further work has been done on modelling the nature of the DNF Reference Object. The latter was discussed at the Expert Group Meeting No. 8 in May and a short summary paper and a revised model produced, this is being revised in the light of comments received and will be presented at the next Expert Group meeting in early August.
Our time on the road
DNF started on the road in Cardiff in April and ended in London in June having gone via York and Edinburgh. For stills from the road movie and a commentary click here
DNF at GeoDATA 2006
DNF was part of the line-up at this year's GeoDATA events in Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Liverpool. During the 4 events over 300 people were able to talk to members of the DNF Communications Group and hear a presentation on DNF. All partcipants in the GeoDATA events are being sent a copy of this newsletter so that they can keep up to date with developments in DNF.
DNF is intending to take part in GeoDATA 2007.
New faces in the Expert Group
We welcomed several new members to the Expert Group on the 12th May:
Jerry Giles (British Geological Survey),
Michael Andrews (Cabinet Office),
Andrew Newman (English Nature),
Debbie Wilson (Infoterra),
Clare Hadley (Ordnance Survey and DNF Communications Team),
Paul Starkey (Tenet) and
Peter Parslow (Uk Hydrographic Office).
Claire Rose stood in for Bob Chell (both Laser-Scan).
It proved to be a very interesting and productive meeting, aided and abetted by a stimulating presentation by Les Rackham and just as interesting but as always humorous presentation from Alan Smith of the Office for National Statistics. The record of the meeting is now published and the next meeting will be 9th August where we expect to see some more new faces.
Let's talk!
The Expert Group approved the terms of reference of the DNF Communcations Group at their meeting in May. The Group currently comprises:
Andy Bray, Chair
Clare Hadley
Jamie Justham
Abbie Beckford
Brian Higgs, Local government advocate
Sallie White, AGI liaison
Keith Murray, Expert Group liaison
If you would like to make any suggestions to the Communications Group on how to communicate DNF, then they would be pleased to hear from you. Please email contact@dnf.org
Features and Objects Workshop, Munich
DNF featured in a Features/Objects workshop organised by EuroSDR on 24-25th April 2006. The aim of the workshop was to identify the new developments in developing object databases and related applications across Europe. There were several presentations in this area with leading examples coming from Germany (the AAA model), Netherlands (NEN 3610), Switzerland (InterLIS) and DNF in Great Britain with news that other countries such as Sweden and Northern Ireland are further developing their databases along similar lines. Peter Woodsford organised the event for EuroSDR and a summary of the workshop will be found on EuroSDR's website under "Events" on the front page.