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11.5 Recommendations
The direct use of Web Feature Server in an integrated client is possible, and recommended. None of the issues mentioned above our serious enough to prevent
deployment.
The use of PARTIAL_SUCCESS in WFS 1.0 is not recommended, and we are pleased to see it removed from WFS 1.1.
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12 Web Coverage Service WCS
A Web Coverage Service is used to discover and retrieve coverage data in the form of georeferenced image files. This section documents the process of using a Web Coverage
Service directly from an Integrated Client.
12.1 Direct Access to a Web Coverage Service
The ability to directly communicate with a Web Coverage Service provides an integrated client with a means of working with coverages. A coverage is digital geospatial
information representing space-varying phenomena. A Web Coverage Retrieval
In the following example, an integrated client is used to discover and access coverage information.
Intergrated Client WCS
describeCoverage OfferingName Coverage Description
GetCapabilities Capabilities Document
getCoverage OfferingName Coverage
Figure 17 Coverage Retrieval
In this example an integrated client is provided with a URL of a Web Coverage Service. The Capabilities document is retrieved via a GetCapabilities request. The Capabilities
document provides information detailing the available information by coverageOfferingName, and additional information is retrieved in the form of an XML
document by way of a DescribeCoverage request. Using the description of this coverage
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53 offering, the client can now construct a WCS GetCoverage request and retrieve a result in
a form of one of the formats supported by the WCS.
12.2 Issues and Tradeoffs with Web Feature Service Communication
Although used and implemented within the OWS-3 testbed, Web Coverage Services were not a focal point of the demonstrations for the integrated clients. Part of the reason for
this might be due to the spotlight given to WCS during the OWS-2. It is believed that many of the issues and concerns dealing with a coverage service were discussed and dealt
with during that interoperability testbed.
12.3 Implementation Comments
