Styled Layer Descriptor

A Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) is an XML schema specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for describing the appearance of map layers. It is capable of describing the rendering of vector and raster data. A typical use of SLDs is to instruct a Web Map Service (WMS) of how to render a specific layer.

In August 2007 the SLD specification has been split up into two new OGC specifications : Styled Layer Descriptor Specification now only contains the protocol for communicating with a WMS about how to style a layer. The actual description of the styling is now exclusively described in the Symbology Encoding Implementation Specification.
 * Symbology Encoding Implementation Specification (SE)
 * Styled Layer Descriptor