OGC Web Services (OWS)

OGC Web Services were created more than ten years ago, when the web technologies looked very different from what is used nowadays. OGC encourages the transition from OWS, and"Technical Committee Policies and Procedures 05-020r29" presents a process for deprecating API elements in OGC Standards. If you are going to implement a standard from scratch, please consider using one of the OGC APIs instead.

Legacy Standards

Web Feature Service (WFS)

Interface for requesting geographic features across the web.

Standard →

Web Map Service (WMS)

Interface for requesting georeferenced map images over the web.

Standard →

Web Map Tile Service (WMTS)

Interface for serving pre-rendered, georeferenced map tiles.

Standard →

Web Processing Service (WPS)

Interface for publishing and invoking geospatial processes over the web.

Standard →

Web Coverage Service (WCS)

Interface for accessing multi-dimensional coverage data over the web.

Standard →

Web Map Context (WMC)

Encoding for the state of a map, so it can be shared between clients.

Standard →

Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS)

Query language for filtering and processing multi-dimensional coverages.

Standard →

Who is behind the OGC Standards?

OGC Standards are developed through a member-driven consensus process, which creates royalty free, publicly available, open geospatial standards. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is the organisation which drives this process. It is supported by an active community of members, with involvement from a large range of organizations, as well as smaller ones.

Join OGC today!