Introduction

About This Document

This document covers the concepts of Web Map Service (WMS), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) standards for WMS, capabilities of WMS, and ways to integrate WMS in GIS-based custom application development.

Target Audience

This document is designed to help developers of GIS-based custom application development. Developers unfamiliar with WMS can read about the WMS framework, capabilities, integration procedures and development best practices to design methods for creating innovative world-class GIS applications.

What is WMS?

WMS is a standard protocol for serving georeferenced Map images over the Internet.

These images are generated by a Map server using data from a GIS database. A Map is a visual representation of geodata, not the data itself.

These Maps are generally rendered in a pictorial format in the following formats: PNG, GIF or JPEG or occasionally as vector-based graphical elements in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) or Web Computer Graphics Metafile (WebCGM).

The specification was developed and first published by the OGC in 1999. OGC released WMS version 1.0.0 in April 2000, followed by version 1.1.0 in June 2001 and version 1.1.1 in January 2002. The latest version of WMS is 1.3.0 which was released by OGC in January 2004.

WMS is a widely supported format for Maps and GIS data accessed via the Internet and loaded into client-side GIS software. Major commercial GIS and mapping software that supports WMS include ESRI® ArcGIS™ products, MapInfo® Professional, Google Earth™ mapping service. Open source software that supports WMS includes Quantum GIS, uDig, Autodesk MapGuide® Open Source and OpenLayers.

References

  • http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Map_Service
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS#OGC_standards
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_Markup_Language