Concept information
Preferred term
OGC/WMS
Definition
- The Open Geospatial Consortium/Web Map Service is a specification developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium that defines three WMS operations: 1. GetCapabilities returns service-level metadata, which is a description of the service's information content and acceptable request parameters; 2. GetMap returns a map image whose geospatial and dimensional parameters are well defined; 3. GetFeatureInfo (optional) returns information about particular features shown on a map. This specification defines a syntax for World Wide Web (WWW) Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that invoke each of these operations. Also, an Extensible Markup Language (XML) encoding is defined for service-level metadata. When requesting a map, a client may specify the information to be shown on the map (one or more "Layers"), possibly the "Styles" of those Layers, what portion of the Earth is to be mapped (a "Bounding Box"), the projected or geographic coordinate reference system to be used (the "Spatial Reference System," or SRS), the desired output format, the output size (Width and Height), and background transparency and color. When two or more maps are produced with the same Bounding Box, Spatial Reference System, and output size, the results can be accurately layered to produce a composite map. The use of image formats that support transparent backgrounds allows the lower Layers to be visible. Furthermore, individual map Layers can be requested from different Servers. The WMS specification thus enables the creation of a network of distributed Map Servers from which Clients can build customized maps. A particular WMS provider in a distributed WMS network need only be the steward of its own data collection. This stands in contrast to vertically integrated web mapping sites that gather in one place all of the data to be made accessible by their own private interface. Visit the Open Geospatial Consortium homepage at http://www.opengeospatial.org/ (en)
Broader concept
- M - O (en)
URI
https://gcmd.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/8e4166cf-685d-446f-af1e-5b47a765c08a
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