FMI Meteorological Objects (version 2009/02)

FMI Meteorological Objects represent different weather-related phenomena described as GML Features. The primary use for these XML Schemas is describing the language for exchanging high-level abstaractions of meteorological data (weather analysis results, forecast coordination maps,...) using the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS).

The schemas have been separated into several XML Schema files, but all the elements and types are declared in the same version-dependent namespace: http://xml.fmi.fi/namespace/meteorology/conceptual-model/meteorological-objects/2009/02. Users are free to use only a subset of these schemas by either

• importing only one of the schema files as metobjects namespace in their own schemas, or
• by creating and hosting an aggregate schema file with the metobjects targetNamespace including only the the wanted subset of metobjects schema files, and importing the created aggregate schema files as the metobjects namespace.

An aggregate schema file metobjects-all.xsd has been provided for those willing to import all the elements and types in their own schemas as the metobjects namespace.

Documentation & Schema files

HTML-based documentation generated with xs3p-library (using Oxygen XML) is provided with the schemas. Unfortunately linking between different documentation files does not work at the moment.

• metobjects-common [doc] [schema]: common elements used in more than one of the other schema files
• metobjects-base [doc] [schema]:(mostly abstract) base elements and types for metobjects
• metobjects-point [doc] [schema]: features fixed at a single point in space (symbols e.g.).
• metobjects-linear [doc] [schema]:features having a linear representation in space (fronts, jets, e.g.)
• metobjects-surface [doc] [schema]: features covering a "on-the-earth-surface" geospatial area (rain or cloud areas)
• metobjects-solid [doc] [schema]: placeholder for features represented as 3D volumes
• metobjects-collection [doc] [schema]: collections consisting of other metobjects (complete weather analysis or forecast for a specific time e.g.)
• metobjects-all [schema]: aggregate containing all the metobject elements and types.

Changes since 2008/11

• Fixed typo: "*perioid" is now "*period" everywhere.
• AbstractLineObjectType had Curve element as direct child. This is against the GML object/property rule (objects may only contains properties as direct children, a property may have an object as its value). AbstractLineObjectType now has "curve" property containing the Curve object element.
• New SplineSurfacePatchType type and SplineSurfacePatch element (and corresdponding property type and element) with a fixed interpolation attribute value "polynomialSpline". The AbstractSurfaceObjectType's surface element is now of type SplineSurfacePatchPropertyType.
• Changes in the substitutionGroup attributes of features, mainly between metobj:_MeteorologicalObject and gml:_Feature. Hopefully they are now OK.
• Separation of the single schema file into 7 schema files.