Business to Business

WMS

Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving geo-referenced map images, in our case aerial photography or raster mapping over the Internet. The imagery is served by a map server using data from a GIS database The specification was developed and first published by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999. At the client end all that is required is a WMS compliant application to be able to access and display the imagery. This includes leading GIS software such as Mapinfo and Arc GIS.

The service can be set up for specific areas such as cities, counties, districts, depending on clients’ specific needs.

The advantages of WMS

There are significant practical and commercial benefits from accessing aerial photography via WMS:

• We take care of image storage and delivery
• We ensure access to the latest imagery
• The solution is simple to implement
• It extends access to aerial photography to users across an organisation
• There are flexible payment models i.e. by usage as well as geographic extent

Imagexpress Direct

This service has been developed in house by Getmapping and is in use by a number of key clients such as 192.com and Landmark through their Promap service. Promap alone was responsible for in excess of 15m requests between February and October 2009. Imagexpress Direct has its own API so it is straightforward to build Getmapping imagery into a website, web based service or process.

Once again their are significant advantages to using Imagexpress Direct

• Fast online access to areas of interest
• Minimal set up time
• Seamless integration of imagery into your website, service or process
• No requirement to hold, update or maintain imagery
• Only pay for the areas used

 WFS

A Web Feature Service (WFS) allows a client to perform data manipulation operations on a set of geographic features. It is reliant on GML, the Geographic Markup Language. Unlike WMS which returns an image of a map, the WFS service returns actual features with geometry and attributes that clients can use in any type of geospatial analysis. WFS services also support filters that allow users to perform spatial and attribute queries on the data. manipulation operations include the ability to:

 • Get or query features based on spatial and non-spatial constraints
• Create a new feature
• Delete a feature
• Update a feature

To all intents and purposes WFS deals with vector files such as OS MasterMap. which permits the actual sharing and editing of the data that is used to generate the maps detailed query and manipulation such as may be required in a fully fledged browser based GIS application.

The UK’s Premier Online Directory Case Study Computers in business and the home and the ever growing availability of broadband connections to the Internet means that businesses and the public has access to more information than ever before. However there is a downside to this. With so much content available it can be very difficult to find exactly what you want, hence the rise and rise of the search engine. Away from Google and Bing, essentially Internet indexing sites, there is still a huge demand for specialist internet enabled directory sites like 192.com. Click here to download the full version of the PDF.