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Hi Jon, a really interesting discussion has evolved here. Let me throw in my 2 cents from a WCS perspective: Jon Blower wrote:
this fits nicely with one of the packaging alternatives we have in planning: GetCoverage response is an XML structure containing URLs to coverages for subsequent download by the client. Let me point out that many WCS users very much want a "single file" response, that is: direct delivery of the encoded file. By using WCS & GetCoverage you get such access variants in an interoperable way.Hi Steve, Stefano, John et al., This looks like a good starting point for harmonization. John Caron described one method of bridging between WCS and OPeNDAP: 1) Client discovers Coverage somehow 2) Client gets description of coverage via DescribeCoverage() 3) Client calls GetCoverage() 4) Server returns OPeNDAP URL to the result
hm, this seems to employ WCS just as a catalog lookup service - why then use a WCS at all? Probably you would need to define some structure on the free metadata part so that the extra info becomes useful.Another alternative (to complement, not replace, the above) might be to bypass GetCoverage() altogether: 1) Client discovers Coverage somehow 2) Client gets description of coverage via DescribeCoverage(). Description includes OPeNDAP URL to entire Coverage. 3) Client opts to use OPeNDAP to access subsets, without calling GetCoverage() at all. A client might choose this so that it can access more precise subsets, accepting the extra complexity.
In the end, you define another access protocol = standard. cheers, Peter
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