Sub project (SP) 18

Project participant: AGROCOM GmbH & Co. Agrarsystem KG

SP title: Standardisation of office software for precision farming enabling simplified data managment.

SP shortened title: Standardisation of office software

SP goals: Development of standard interfaces in agricultural management systems for exchanging data in the context of precision farming based on standard data formats like agroXML

Position of the sub project in the group/network: Close cooperation with SP 7,8 and 19 of project domain 2 (information management).

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Brief description

Sub project 18 develops a data interface in an agricultural management system using the software AGRO-NET of agrocom as an example where the special focus lies on the internal exchange of precision farming contents.

The emphasis is based here on the development of an adequate data exchange format to map all required levels of data. Especially in cooperation with sub project 19 agroXML existing structures of agroXML are expanded to exchange field consistent information as well as site specific and spatial information.

A special demand is the integration of existing standards in agroXML like GML to exchange common, spatial GIS information and ISO 11783 XML (Part 10) to map control information for site specific farming using suitable implements.

For the practical data transfer the SP develops means to map contents of an agricultural management system into agroXML. In terms of a “one time only recording” the user of an agricultural management system will get a high grade of reusability of his data. To reach this goal in different types of agricultural management systems the development proceeding is documented in a manual.

As a mechanism to transfer agroXML compliant content a web service interface will be developed to enable linking between different management systems over the internet.

Status Quo

The actual main focus is the mapping of the different data formats from the ISO 11783 Part 10 and the GML standard in agroXML. Because of the completely different concepts currently only parts of the named standards are integrated in agroXML.
In doing so concrete questions like “which data should for which purpose should be transferred to whom?” are used as a guideline to reduce the manifold models of data format development.

Main questions

· How complete can all in a agricultural management system available, for precision farming relevant data be mapped in an universal data format, so that the recipient can process all information non-ambiguous and as much as possible automated ?

· Which steps of the internal workflow need to be considered for the related data transfer?

· How universal can the extraction of information from a agricultural management system be described in agroXML ?

Last updated: June 30^th, 2005