The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Testbed is an annual research and development program that explores geospatial technology from various angles. It takes the OGC standards baseline into account, but at the same time allows for exploration of selected aspects from a different perspective.

“As the largest Research & Development (R&D) Initiatives conducted under OGC’s COSI Program, OGC Testbeds exist at the cutting edge of technology, actively exploring and evaluating future geospatial technologies to solve today’s problems. The solutions developed in Testbeds eventually move into the OGC Standards Program, where they are reviewed, revised, and potentially approved as new international open standards that can reach millions of individuals.” (OGC Testbed-19 | OGC, 2023)

52°North participated in the “GeoDataCubes” (GDC) task. This task supports the GDC Standards Working Group’s efforts, fostering close collaboration throughout the duration of the Testbed. Testbed participants help shape the GDC API and create prototypes using an agile approach to explore its functionality.

52°North developed an Executable Test Suite (ETS) for the TEAM Engine test framework. The ETS ensures the conformance of implementations of OGC standards. Developing the ETS and simultaneously specifying the new GeoDataCube standard enabled implementers to test their services from the beginning. This allowed early identification of functionality and interoperability issues, which could then be discussed with the editors of the standard. The ETS was developed using the TestNG test framework for Java.