[OpenLayers-Dev] SOS support

[Eric Lemoine]

On Thursday, March 25, 2010, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
> Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> the example demonstrates the way the building blocks provided by the
>> library can be tied together, this is highly application-specific,
>> everybody will want to do it in a different way. The example is just
>> one way.
>>
>> So what the library provides are the building blocks: 1) a protocol
>> for communicating with an SOS 2) formats to parse several SOS
>> responses and write out some requests
>>
>> These can be used with the standard OpenLayers.Layer.Vector. This is
>> the way OpenLayers has been redesigned about 1 or 1,5 years ago,
>> because for every type a new Layer type was necessary in the past
>> (Layer.GML etc). With the new design, this is not necessary anymore.
>> It is a much cleaner design.
>>
>> So, to answer your question, there won't be an OpenLayers.Layer.SOS.
>> An application builder is responsible for tying the pieces together.
>>
>
> Hey-
>
> Quick follow up on this.
>
> Personally, I don't think we should discourage the creation of new
> layers that use specific formats, protocols, and strategies.
>
> The vector behavior design was supposed to encourage reuse of common
> code rather than discourage new specific layer types.
>
> Not sure how others feel, but if someone wanted to create a specific SOS
> layer, I'd be in favor of including it.
>
> Disclaimer: I have no idea if someone could create an SOS layer that
> would be useful in multiple applications.

Hi

Adding convenience classes makes sense to me. This "vector behavior"
stuff can look scary to newcomers, and convenience classes could
improve the situation I think.

For example we could have a WFS layer, pre-configured with a WFS
protocol and a BBOX strategy, and with which the user just needs to
set "url" and "featureNS" in the options passed to the constructor.
This layer could be OpenLayers.Layer.Vector.WFS, although I don't like
having four levels too much; but I guess this kind of details should
be discussed in a specific thread.

Cheers,

-- 
Eric Lemoine

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