Web Map Service (WMS)

WMS has three methods:

1. GetCapabilities

2. GetMap

3. GetFeatureInfo

GetMap gives you a map image right in your browser:

• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/wms_buoy_location?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=bathy_poly,gom_boundary,buoy_location

• This is Geospatial data - so BBOX can be added

    BBOX=MinLongitue,MinLatitude,MaxLongitude,MaxLatitude

All OGC Web Services support the use of a BBOX parameter.

GetCapabilities provides an XML response with the various layers available:

• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/wms_buoy_location?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetCapabilities

(Firefox opens this in a new window for some reason)
Scroll down and look for example for:  <Layer><Name>bathy_poly</Name>
Any of these Name's can be passed in the query string, e.g. layers=bathy_poly

buoy_location	bathy_poly
gom_boundary	buoy_location_noaa
buoy_location_gm	nos_stations
buoy_UNH	place_names
gom_land	graticule







• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/wms_buoy_location?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=bathy_poly

   change to: layers=buoy_location_gm to get just the GoMOOS buoys.

• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/wms_buoy_location?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=buoy_location_gm

or for NOAA buoys and CMAN:

• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/wms_buoy_location?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=buoy_location_noaa

Layers can be a comma separated list as in the first example.
The order is important base layers must come first:  layers=bathy_poly,gom_boundary,buoy_location

Finally, WMS supports a time parameter time=YYYY-MM-DD+HH:MM:SS.

GoMOOS has a Sea Surface Temperature (SST) WMS  which supports the time parameter to retrieve SST at a specific time.

Time example: time=YYYY-MM-DD+HH:MM

• http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms/gom_wms2?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&layers=gom_sst&time=2007-08-04+10:00:00

Try changing the time from summer to 2007-12-04+10:00:00 (winter) to see the SST color changes.

Try changing the layers=gom_sst to layers=gom_sst_text_gm to see a display, as an image, of the actual SST values.

Note: The color scale has been hard coded into this WMS. But we could have used the OGC "Style Layer Descriptor" standard, which would allow the client (your browser in this case) to customize the color scale too.