Yesterday, 14th April, KML 2.2. became an official OpenGeoSpatial (OGC) standard. KML is of course well known as it is Google format for data to be visualised in Google Maps and Google Earth. A huge amount of KML files is currently available. Searching in Google Search with the term ” filetype:kml” results in 3.670.00 hits, “filetype:kmz” (compressed kml) 1.870.000 hits. So in total more than 5 million KML files.
The KML XML Schema can be found here: http://schemas.opengis.net/kml/2.2.0/ogckml22.xsd. The geometry types are now derived from GML 2.1.2.
It offers two ways to add you own data or datamodel: Either by creating a KML Application Profile or by using the ExtendedData element. I will write some post about it soon. Especially the last one can prove very useful to visualise data as well as use it for further processing. Also I think I’ll write something about my opinion of the KML standard in the OGC set of standards.