Common Ground 2000
Application Independent Information

A format designed as a transport of data between all software products. The objective is to represent all digital data in a single format that is accessible to humans and computers

This format was created in 1995 for a mapping conference. After working 25 years translating propriety mapping systems, databases, plot files, and tape formats, I decided to design a single format that would handle the same job, CG2 is the result. It took 6 months to design, a tagged comma separated values (CSV) format.

I added 5 enhancements to a standard CSV file:

1. Tagged records

2. Field names and the original format

3. Hierarchical data model

4. Arrays

5. Structure (1 level)

The result is that CG2 can duplicate all digital files. My original intent was to create a transport media that could be read by humans and computer and EASY to program, as it turns out the format could replace all digital data structures, this would mean that we would have no more propriety data structures (.doc, .mdb, .gif, oracle, sybase, ...) which is: application independent information.

My recommendation is to use CG2 as the format for the application's data stored on disk. In doing so the information would be application independent. An application would be able to read and write a cg2 file independent of any other application.

The health care system could use CG2 to standardize patient information. CG2 had no inherent limits, a single cg2 file could contain the contents of your complete company's network, millions of files, thousands of formats, and terabytes of data, and be accessed just as fast (index it).

Existing file formats (i.e. XML) generally have none of the elements of CG2, however any file read all of these elements must be determined. Most of the information about a file is stored in "code" and never seen. Files used for transport or ones that are popular may have a published specification which always seem to have 1400 pages, (PDF, SDTS, TIGER, DOC, ...)  not much help, generally takes 6 to 8 months of work to move into code.

Some Examples of the more complex file structures: (I need to add all their CG2 equivalent)

• .PDF 1 file, multiple structures (objects)

• .DWG, 1 file, multiple sections and structures

• .ACCDB 1 file, multiple sections and structures

• Arc/Info multiple files, sections and structures

The word "propriety" got me started 31 years ago to remove the barriers. "The Information I create I should own".

Cg2 Format Specification