[OSGeodata] WFS-basic and geometadata exchange

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

> dear all,
> 
> I have not been thinking very hard about simple geometadata 
> exchange interfaces recently  but every time i hear someone 
> mention Raj's WFS-basic effort I jump a bit. You look at the 
> query interface to it and it is very simplified - no Filters, 
> just a bounding box and date start and end range. There is a 
> DescribeFeatureType function which right now is returning a 
> pile of XMLSchema description verbiage.
> I see a big place for dclite4g / GeoRSS in here - i would 
> like to see Tom's OWSCat done over WFSBasic. One could even 
> add in OAI-PMH functions like ListRecordTypes [sic?] as well, 
> if needed. Am i making sense?
> 
> http://www.ogcnetwork.net/wfsbasic
> 

I like WFS basic, as it lowers the barrier / buy-in cost for the
general.  Although, from the OGC point of view, this may be confusing
(WFS-basic has always meant a non-transactional WFS, as opposed to this
new thing).

The big advantage, IMHO, would be the easier filters.  Building OGC
Filters, while not a huge huge job, may be cumbersome for the
non-converted.

http://example.com/osgeocat?service=WFSBASIC&version=1.0.0&
request=GetFeature&outputformat=dclite4g&typename=services&keyword=*road
s*

...would search all Services whose keyword metadata matches roads.

In either case, a client must do a DescribeFeatureType to see what's
going on under the hood of the typename.

Note that something like owscat already does this, but the client has to
setup the <Filter> constructs.

For me, I don't mind either interface for discovery.


..Tom