Sean Gillies on OGC WMTS
March 19, 2009 6 Comments
Sean is all over OGC’s Web Map Tiling Standard.
I have sent in a “public comment” advising the authors on how to better follow the REST style. To be honest, I’d rather the OGC stayed away from REST, but if it won’t, I’ll insist it’s done properly and doesn’t misinform mainstream GIS developers. I’ll even try to help as much as the OGC’s closed process will allow.
We talk about open standards quite a bit and when it comes to GIS software implementing them, OGC is usually what we see. It would be a shame to see WMTS fail as much as WFS has in the marketplace because it is ill conceived. Hopefully the OGC will take advantage of Sean’s comments to improve the spec. The OGC comment process has to be better than this:
No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
About James Fee
REST is designed to hide the imlementation details, and make resources less obscure.
But, Sean’s request is based on the assumption; data is hosted in a cloud where the number of files/resources in a directory does not affect performance.
Providing a format string, rather than a strict URL scheme is one solution, but the that places an increased responsibility on developers.
Right about the aim of REST, and also about how it puts more responsibility on clients.
But, no I’m not assuming that tiles are hosted in “the cloud”. I’m saying that it shouldn’t matter at all how they are hosted, and that no particular storage or platform should be excluded. Any URI should be as good as another.
@ James
I wanted to follow up on your comment that WFS has failed in the marketplace. How is WFS ill-conceived? I’m asking because I was considering trying a WFS-T service with ArcGIS Server on an upcoming project…
Thanks!
Of course this is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt:
Lack of URIs means no linking or discovery by Google Search
It doesn’t leverage web infrastructure for caching or load balancing.
It has a proprietary interface that requires clients that are coupled to servers
I could go on, but generally I don’t like its architecture. I suppose it is better than some solutions, but honestly WFS is still routed in an older way of thinking that to me isn’t “web compatible”.
WFS? XM-Hell.
“It has a proprietary interface that requires clients that are coupled to servers”
What do you mean with that? Do you mean the GML hell? Or just the way to access the WFS service. If so, I’m afraid that the same could be applied to WMS services, don’t you think?