[OWSLib-devel] Parsing data from ESRI WCS servers [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Dominic Lowe]

Hi Chris,

What version of WCS is the ESRI server claiming to serve?

I'm asking as the WCS 1.1.X schemas are actually published using two different versions of OWS.

WCS version 1.1.0.2:
http://schemas.opengis.net/wcs/1.1.0/wcsDescribeCoverage.xsd  
Which does use the http://www.opengis.net/ows  namespace.

And WCS version 1.1.3 (so presumably newer)
http://schemas.opengis.net/wcs/1.1/wcsDescribeCoverage.xsd
Which uses http://www.opengis.net/ows/1.1 

(The WCS 1.1 v 1.1.0 thing doesn't help here... I don't know what the thinking was there.)

That's not to say there's not a problem with OWSLib parsing of different versions of ows, but it would be good to be sure about the root cause before patching it. 


Cheers,
Dom


-----Original Message-----
From: owslib-devel-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:owslib-devel-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Eykamp
Sent: Wednesday, 6 August 2014 7:30 PM
To: owslib-devel at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [OWSLib-devel] Parsing data from ESRI WCS servers

Hello,

I found a problem with OWSLib and parsing metadata from a ESRI WCS server.  It seems that ESRI does not fully adhere to the OWS standards, and uses slightly different namespaces.

ESRI ==> xmlns:ows="http://www.opengis.net/ows"
MapServer ==> xmlns:ows="http://www.opengis.net/ows/1.1"

This causes parsing of XML emitted by ESRI servers to fail.  To be clear, the problem is entirely on the ESRI side; OWSLib is doing the right thing.  However, I think it would make sense to patch OWSLib to be able to read the ESRI data as ESRI is a rather big player in the GIS world.

I would propose moving all the attribute parsing into a function, which would replace the repeated namespace references sprinkled throughout the code.  That function could try the standard namespace first, and if that failed, try the ESRI namespace.

This is the approach adopted by OpenLayers, and I think it would make sense to apply to OWSLib as well.

If there is some agreement that this is a good way to do, I will submit a patch.  However, I am in the process of leaving my current position, so if this is not decided by the middle of next week, I will lose access to my current workspace and toolset, and there may be some delay getting the patch written.

Thanks,

Chris

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