[Mapserver-dev] OWS metadata and LegendURL clarification

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

Hi,

First off, I'd like to thank Julien and Assefa for their work in
implementing msOWSPrintURLType() (bug 944)into CVS and LegendURL (bug
1001).  This will enable richer output for OGC metadata in Capabilities,
as well as streamlining the way URLs are formatted.  This will be a big
benefit for the catalogs and registries out there who harvest OGC Web
Services for discovery.

As a result, mapfiles can now define:

"wms_dataurl_format"
"wms_dataurl_type"
"wms_dataurl_href"

"wms_metadataurl_format"
"wms_metadataurl_type"
"wms_metadataurl_href"

"wfs_metadataurl_format"
"wfs_metadataurl_type"
"wfs_metadataurl_href"

Question:

will the generic ows_* directives be implemented for WMS and WFS, as
they were for WCS, in time for 4.4.0?

For Legends (bug 262, which was solved by bug 944):

wms_style    =>  name of the style
wms_style_<style's_name>_legendurl_href
wms_style_<style's_name>_legendurl_format
wms_style_<style's_name>_legendurl_width
wms_style_<style's_name>_legendurl_height

Question:

The issue I have with this is that someone has to explicitly define this
in the mapfile.  AFAIK, MapServer doesn't support multiple styles in WMS
for layers, so we always default to one style.

IMHO, the only directives a user should be able to configure are:

"wms_legendurl_href"
"wms_legendurl_width"
"wms_legendurl_height"

(note the change to "wms_legendurl_*" from
"wms_style_<style's_name>_legendurl_*)

If and only if they define a static image for the href.  Else, if they
don't define anything a LegendURL should be returned in Capabilities.

This is partly addressed in bug 1001.

Comments?  I hope this made sense.

..Tom