New AGS Validator Launched

Just months after releasing AGS 4.1 the Association of Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Specialists (AGS) are releasing a beta version of an AGS file validator. The ‘AGS Validator BETA’ will provide a single source for validating ‘Electronic Transfer of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Data – AGS4’ (AGS Data Format) files.

For many years the industry has used commercial AGS Data Format checking applications (checkers)
that sometimes produce differing results due to the varied assumptions made by the developers.
Therefore, users have traditionally specified AGS files must be validated by several of these checkers
before the data is submitted to them, resulting in additional work for users, contractors, and software
providers.

The AGS Validator initiative, started by Asitha Senanayake from Fugro and aided by Roger Chandler
from Bentley, has been running for six months and has been rigorously tested by members of the AGS
committee over recent months. The committee feel it is ready to be tested in the real world and are
therefore releasing it to the industry for beta testing.

The ‘AGS Validator BETA’ is a standalone software program. There are further initiatives in the pipeline
to provide capability to import AGS Data Format files into Excel and the British Geological Survey (BGS) are working on an online web validator due for release at the end of the summer. All validator Python libraries have been developed under Lesser General Public (LGPL) open-source licences. The project has received coding contributions from four countries to date, demonstrating the power of the collaborative, open-source working environment. Find out more and download the software here.