WCS Wrapper Configuration

Structure of OWS/web

OWS/web is for system developers only.

OWS/web/static contains static web content. You can put any documentation here and it will be served as a web page or download. The home page index.html is pretty much mandatory, and you should change favicon.ico to reflect your organization. We highly recommend, that you customize documents for your WCS service.

OWS/web/static/cache is a folder for temporary files. The service uses it for output files. Anything you put there will be deleted when space is needed.

The installation contains an example datasets OWS/web/static/testprovider and OWS/web/static/point. The testprovider is a demo NetCDF dataset, point is an example how to server point data from a SQL database. Every service will have a folder with the same name here. So create yourself a folder datasets OWS/web/static/myservice and your service URL will be at http://localhost:8080/myservice

Enter Provider Metadata

Every provider should have wcs_capabilities.conf that lists keywords and contact information. The format is simple, copy one from the testprovider and edit it.

   # this file provides some information about the provider
   # and is incorporated into the respective WCS responses.
   # all currently available field identifiers are listed below.
   # please define every identifier only once.
   # other identifiers will be ignored, input is case sensitive.
   # the format is always <identifier>: <value>.
   # whitespaces before and after <value> will be stripped.
   # KEYWORDS can take a comma separated list that will then be
   # included in the respective keyword tags
   # empty lines and lines starting with "#" will be ignored.
   PROVIDER_TITLE: ASOS 1 minute data
   PROVIDER_ABSTRACT: NCDC
   KEYWORDS: Domain:Aerosol, Platform:Network, Instrument:Unknown, DataType:Point, Distributor:DataFed, Originator:NCDC, TimeRes:Minute, Vertical:Surface, TopicCategory:climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
   FEES: NONE
   CONSTRAINTS: NONE
   PROVIDER_SITE: insert URL here
   CONTACT_INDIVIDUAL: TBD
   CONTACT_PHONE: undef
   CONTACT_STREET: street
   CONTACT_CITY: city
   CONTACT_ADM_AREA: adm. area
   CONTACT_POSTCODE: postcode
   CONTACT_COUNTRY: country
   CONTACT_EMAIL: contact email

The Human Interface: Create the index.html Front Pages for Visitors.

If no query is present, the server gives a default page index.html. You should create these pages for your server and for all the providers.

The server index.html is at OWS/web/static/index.html, which will be displayed from url http://128.252.202.19:8080/ at test server or at localhost.

Every provider folder should also have an index.html like OWS/web/static/testprovider/index.html which will be displayed from http://128.252.202.19:8080/HTAP at test server or at localhost.

Windows Implementation Bug

Important There is a bug deep in python core libraries that make serving text files a little special. The files need to be encoded with unix style line ending convention '\n', instead of windows style '\r\n'.

To fix this, issue command:

   python /OWS/web/owsadmin.py unix_nl filename.html

for every text file you serve. Binary files are unaffected.