[OSGeo-Discuss] The state of WMS tile caching

[Alexandre Leroux]

Hi list,

I have a rather simple question about the state of WMS tile caching. The 
wiki pages content is mostly one or two years old now:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/WMS_Tile_Caching
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/WMS_Tiling_Client_Recommendation

I took a look at
http://www.tilecache.org/ and
http://geowebcache.org/trac
but wasn't able to confidently answer my question.

Can WMS tiles be cached by the server for any WMS client and still serve 
WMS according to the standard?

I know that a you can constrain WMS requests to a predefined grid if you 
control the client's request, but what if you don't control the client's 
request, can caching still be done?

[to provide some context for the curious ones, it's for a public 
prototype for Canadian weather data dissemination and we're pretty 
excited about it - however, because weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca is the most 
visited Canadian website (that's what they tell us, but I guess 
google.com/.ca probably comes first), we need caching capabilities]


Thanks a lot for any related information,

Alex
-- 
Alexandre Leroux, M.Sc., Ing.
Environnement Canada / Environment Canada
Centre météorologique canadien / Canadian Meteorological Centre
Section de la réponse aux urgences environnementales /
Environmental Emergency Response Section
alexandre.leroux at ec.gc.ca