ISO 19109 defines rules for creating and documenting application schemas, including principles for the definition of features.

The scope of this International Standard includes the following:

- conceptual modelling of features and their properties from a universe of discourse;

- definition of application schemas;

- use of the conceptual schema language for application schemas;

- transition from the concepts in the conceptual model to the data types in the application schema;

- integration of standardized schemas from other ISO geographic information standards with the application schema.

The following are outside the scope:

- choice of one particular conceptual schema language for application schemas;

- definition of any particular application schema;

- representation of feature types and their properties in a feature catalogue;

- representation of metadata;

- rules for mapping one application schema to another;

- implementation of the application schema in a computer environment;

- computer system and application software design;

- programming.