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  1. 1. Introduction
    1. 1.1 OGC Standards
      1. Introduction to OGC
      1. 1.1.1 Web Mapping Service
        1. Introduction to WMS
        2. WMS Examples
      1. 1.1.2 Web Feature Service
        1. Introduction to WFS
        2. WFS Examples
      1. 1.1.3 Web Coverage Service
        1. Introduction to WCS
        2. WCS Examples
      1. 1.1.4 Web Processing Service
        1. Introduction to WPS
        2. WPS Examples
    1. 1.2 CAAML
      1. Introduction to CAAML
    1. 1.3 INSPIRE
      1. Introduction to INSPIRE
  1. 2. Standards in action
    1. 2.1 Prepare data and toolkit
      1. Data and geospatial tools
      2. Start the environment
      1. 2.1.1 Manage the data
        1. Load Data
        2. Clean Data
      1. 2.1.2 Design the CAAML schema
        1. CAAML model design
        2. Populate Region
    1. 2.2 Build CAAML with GeoAvalanche
      1. Configure the application schema for CAAML
      2. Push the configuration to GeoAvalanche
      3. Query our Region features
  1. 3. Main Chapter
    1. Lesson Six

Introduction to WFS

What it is

WFS is a standard service interface which provides access to geographic information at the level of features and feature properties using web services.

It allows clients to retrieve or modify the data they are seeking, rather than retrieving a large file that not only contains the data but potentially a lot more such as additional data that it is not necessarily required.

This service behaves to providing transactions on and access to geographic features in a manner independent of the underlying data store.

The OGC WFS standard meets largely the requirements from the INSPIRE Download Services specification.

Allowed operations

The following WFS operations are defined in the specification that allows to call:

GetCapabilities

HTTP call to discover service-level metadata and capabilities

DescribeFeatureType

HTTP call to retrieve the application schema that defines the feature types that the service offers

GetFeature

HTTP call to retrieve features or values of feature properties from the underlying datastore based upon constraints on those properties

Transaction

HTTP call to create, change, replace and delete features and their properties

LockingFeature

HTTP call to prevent other users making modifications at the same time

{List/Describe/Create/Drop}StoredQuery

HTTP call to list, describe, create and drop parameterized query expressions that are stored by the server and can be repeatedly invoked using different parameter values.