Geospatial service
Geospatial services , including geodata services or OpenGIS Web Services ( OWS ), are networkable, spatial web services that make geodata accessible in a structured form.
Spatial services play a central role in a spatial data infrastructure , because they are the link to the spatial data in their numerous data models and formats. Only through the use of geospatial services is interoperable use for a wide variety of network-based geographic applications and geographic information systems (GIS) possible.
For access to geoservices, geoportals implemented as web applications or locally installed GIS clients ( geobrowser ) equipped with the appropriate functionality can be used.
Standards
Standardization is carried out with the technical documents of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These specifications are in turn based on the ISO series of standards 19100 , edited by ISO TC 211.
A distinction is made between the following types of geospatial services, defined by the standards of the OGC:
- WCS, Web Coverage Service
- WFS, Web Feature Service , including its Gazetteer Profile (WFS-G), transactional WFS-T
- WMS, Web Map Service , tiled as Web Map Tile Service WMTS, also Tile Map Service TMS
A WCS request delivers the selected raster data together with detailed descriptions, allows complex queries and delivers the data with their original semantics, i.e. ready for further processing. This means that WCS stands alongside the "sibling standards" Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS): WCS supports retrieval on grids, WFS on the other hand, on vector geometry. Both allow semantics-appropriate further processing on the client side. The actual characteristics are output in Geography Markup Language (GML). WMS, on the other hand, combines vector and raster data into a static map image in formats such as PNG or JPEG and is therefore specialized in graphic representation.
- CSW, Web Catalog Service
- WPS, Web Processing Service
- WTS, Web Terrain Service (standard not yet adopted)
- WCTS, Web Coordinate Transformation Service (standard not yet adopted)
Germany
In Germany, the characteristics of the services are determined by the spatial data infrastructure Germany ( GDI-DE ) and its application profiles. Some of the individual federal states have published their own application profiles.
Europe
With the implementation provisions of the INSPIRE directive of the European Union , " spatial data services and other network services" are defined as the basis for the interoperable Europe-wide use of spatial information. In their technical form, they are based on the OGC standards, but supplemented by access control mechanisms that have not yet been taken into account in OGC.
Like the Web Feature Service, the WebCoverageService is one of the download services within the meaning of the INSPIRE regulation, while the Web Map Service is one of the view services.