At 9.3, ArcGIS Server provides enhanced support for the three leading Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web standards: Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS). In addition, with the recent announcement from OGC that Keyhole Markup Language (KML) 2.2 is now an official OGC standard, ArcGIS Server at 9.3 will comply with the OGC KML specification by allowing users to publish their geographic data as KML 2.2.

ArcGIS Server supports the WMS 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, and 1.3 specifications, and version 9.3 has been enhanced to conform with the ISO-certified 19128 WMS standard. In addition, the WMS implementation has been extended to include the OGC Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) specification. The SLD capability allows map publishers to publish alternative symbology/styles for their published maps, allowing consumers to select appropriate styles for the server-rendered maps. Consumers of WMS services can also create these SLD documents and then associate them with the published maps, allowing for greater client-side control of symbology. The symbology in the SLD documents can be rule driven, the rules being specified using the OGC Filter Encoding (FE) specification.

WFS is a service that allows users to publish vector feature collections that may be queried and updated by clients. ArcGIS Server 9.3 supports WFS 1.1 and the Simple Features Profile of GML. ArcGIS Server also supports Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T) 1.1. This allows any GIS client to carry out transactions against geodatabases using the ArcGIS Server published WFS-T service.

WCS is a data service that allows users to publish coverages on the Web. This is different than the ArcInfo coverages and refers to an OGC standard for single- and multiband raster data that can be accessed by clients. ArcGIS Server 9.3 allows users to publish any raster data type as an OGC WCS 1.0, 1.1, or 1.1.1 service. Using the WCS specification, clients can get subsets of the data and request server-side resampling of the data. ArcGIS Server also supports publishing geoprocessing models that consume WCS services. For example, an OGC WCS service with precipitation data can be used as input to a geoprocessing model for calculating near real-time flood delineation.

Conformance to standards promotes innovation, competition, commerce, and free trade so customers can leverage the tools they need to gain a competitive advantage in their industries. Esri is committed to the standards development process and will continue to pursue and implement recognized standards that will foster interoperability between different applications and systems.

More Information

For more information about the support for standards in released and newer versions of Esri products, visit www.esri.com/standards.