[FWTools] GDAL and WFS Simple Features

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 9/28/07, Roy Mendelssohn <Roy.Mendelssohn at noaa.gov> wrote:
> I am somewhat out of my area of knowledge here, but I thought someone
> on the list might be able to help.  Someone we are working with will
> be setting up a WFS service using I believe ArcIMS  (it is one of the
> ESRI server products).  I assume that this sends a WFS restricted to
> Simple Features Profile of some sort.  My question is are there tools
> in Gdal/OGR that should be able to translate these files to other
> formats, or are there other open source libraries that are likely to
> be able to do that  (I.e we want to use the results in our own pages
> not using tools like Mapserver of the like)?

Roy,

OGR includes a GML reader (when built with Xerces) that will read
most WFS produced GML files - at least GML 2.

> If the library would
> require some development, as opposed to the utilities in Gdal say, we
> would prefer Java libraries. Can Openlayers provide the translation,
> even if we do not use it for the mapping?

GDAL has Java bindings but they aren't well maintained currently.

GeoTools (Java) has what I believe to be substantialy better GML
support than OGR, so if you are looking for Java GML support it is
an obvious candidate.

OpenLayers includes GML reading and writing, but I *think* it
may only be GML geometries as opposed to GML feature
collections.

In summary, OGR utilities should be a reasonable good and fast
way of translating WFS GML to other formats.  However, GeoTools
will give you better (safer/more complete) GML support and is
available in a Java environment.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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