Web Based Resources

Web based resources are commonly used for online serving of GIS data, both for vector and image resources.
Orbit supports Web Map Services, Web Map Tile Services, Web Feature Services and Tile Map Services.

Web Map Service (WMS), Web Map Tile Services (WMTS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) are the standard protocols of the Open Geospatial Consortium for serving, viewing or editing georeferenced map images and geographical features over the the internet or Intranet using platform-independent calls.

A WMS, WMTS serves georeference map data only. A WFS returns both spatial features and attribute information. This makes it possible to use a WFS dataset for spatial analyses, attribute viewing and if allowed to edit and update the dataset.

More information : Wikipedia WMS, Wikipedia WMTS and Wikipedia WFS.

Orbit provides 2 methods to connect to a web service and load an available web service resource.

(1) Via user interface service connection
Establish the Web service connection and add one ore more available web service resources.
This user interface method is useful for initial testing of a service and its resources.

• Orbit desktop : Library > Web
• Orbit EOS server : Resources > Datasets > Dataset Setup

(2) Via web service resource connection file
Configure the web service connection and one specific available web service resource to load.
This file based method makes web resources manageable in the same way as other file based resources. It is useful for frequently used web resources, use in Orbit workspaces and sharing with other Orbit users. Additionally an Orbit legend file can be created the preferred dataset crs can be set.

• Orbit Web service resource connection file

Orbit supports Web services as described by the OGC :

• www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms
• www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wmts
• www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs

Currently Orbit supports :

• WMS versions 1.1.0, 1.1.1 and 1.3.0
• WMTS version 1.0.0
• WFS versions 1.1.0, the support of version 2.0 is on our wishlist. Let us know if you are interested.

Remarks :

• View only (WFS)
  WFS support is limited to view only for both spatial and attribute component.
  Editing or updating WFS features and styling is not supported.
  Via a file based connection an Orbit legend can be defined.
• Supported object types (WFS)
  Orbit's engine supports only the vector based variant of the following WFS Ojbect types :
  Point, MultiPoint, LineString, MultiLineString, Curve, MultiCurve, Surface, MultiSurface, Polygon, MultiPolygon
• Used coordiante system
  The first listed supported coordinate system will be used by Orbit.
  Check the available web resource coordinate systems : <Web service url>?Service=WMS&Request=GetCapabilities&Version=1.3.0 .
  Via a file based connection any listed coordinate system can be used as preferred dataset crs.
• Internal resource name
  No point “.” characters allowed in web resource internal name.
  Check the internal name via Dataset Properties > General > Dataset : <Orbit web service name>.<internal web service resource name> .
  If the internal name contains one or more points then the resource cannot be used.

No username and password required.

WMS

• http://demo.cubewerx.com/demo/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi
• http://wms.lizardtech.com/lizardtech/iserv/ows
• http://wms.agiv.be/ogc/wms/omkl

WFS

• http://demo.cubewerx.com/demo/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?datastore=Foundation
• http://www2.dmsolutions.ca/cgi-bin/mswfs_gmap?version=1.0.0&amp;request=getcapabilities&amp;service=wfs

Orbit supports pyramid-based tile services as made popular by OpenStreetMap.

web service resource connection file

Tiled map resource connection file
Configure the tiled map service connection and the web resource to load, cfr web services (see above).

• Orbit Tile Map Service File

To use a Web based resource a successful connection to the providing server/service is required.

If no network connection could be established, obviously Orbit will not be able to load the resource. Review the documentation below on how to check the connection from local network to web service.

If a network connection is successful, but Orbit can't load resource, most probably Orbit (application) is not allowed to get online/network access due to an internal internet security application (e.g. aXsGUARD Gatekeeper from Vasco). The network and/or local computer administrator need to define in the firewall or security application that Orbit may access the online/network service.

Check the connection from the local network to the online service by using “nslookup” or “ping” from the command line. If successful check firewall and security settings, see above.
In the example below a connection to the OpenStreetMap service is tested :

Successful connection

Failed connection