OGC 13-099
5 Conventions
5.1 Abbreviated terms
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPS Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
OGC Open Geospatial Consortium
OWS OGC Web Service
PAWS Policy Administration Web Service
URI Uniform Resource Identifier
URL Uniform Resource Locator
URN Uniform Resource Name
WSDL Web Services Description Language
XACML eXtensible Access Control Markup
Language XML
eXtensible Markup Language XPATH
XML Path Language GeoXACML.
Geospatial eXensible Access Control Markup Language
GeoXACML GeoXACML or XACML
5.2 Use of examples
This specification makes extensive use of informative XML examples. They are meant to illustrate the various aspects of PAWS operations. The bulk of the examples can be found
in Annex C with some examples embedded in the body of the specification.
5.3 XML schemas
Throughout this specification, normative XML Schema fragments are used to define the XML encoding of PAWS operations. These fragments are gathered into a single validated
schema file in Annex B.
OGC 13-099
6 Basic service aspects
6.1 Introduction
This section describes aspects of a PAWS behavior that are independent of particular operations or are common to several operations.
6.2 Request and response encoding and transport protocol
This specification defines an XML based request and response encoding only. It is assumed that the XML encoded PAWS requests and responses are always transmitted
via HTTP POST – i.e. inside the HTTP body.
The root element of all PAWS requests encode the name of the service operation being invoked. The content of the resulting responses are in many cases copies of the original
requests and express an acknowledgment that the operation has been successfully processed. Exceptions to this generic concept are responses to ShowLocks see section
16, SelectPolicyElement see section 21, AnalyzePolicyElement see section
·, OptimizePolicyElement see section
·, TransormPolicyElement see section · and TestPolicyElement see section
· requests, as they need to contain richer response content.
6.3 Policy encoding