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Oceans IE Phase II kickoff meeting
Experiment #1
The intent of Experiment #1 is to begin to test and document the differences between the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) protocol and the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) for retrieving ocean observations. The desired outcome is to produce a Best Practices document describing usage scenarios where each service performs most favorably.
To follow the progress of Experiment #1, review the minutes of the weekly teleconferences.
Experimental Approach
The step that we will take in this experiment include:
1) Set up a database server with historical water level data for the area off the Louisiana and Alabama coasts during August and September of 2005 (timeframe of hurricane Katrina).
2) Configure WFS and SOS access (most likely via Mapserver) to the water level data in this database
3) Use a number of different SOS and WFS clients to retrieve water level data from at least 2-3 different servers for the following scenarios (use cases):
- Get latest observation (e.g. retrieve GoMOOS Buoy A's latest SST reading)
- Retrieve specific historical observation (e.g. retrieve the most recent SST observation from before 00UTC 1-Aug-2005 from Buoy A)
- Retrieve historical time series of observations from a single sensor (e.g. retrieve Buoy A's SST readings from 00UTC 1-Aug-2005 to 00UTC 31-Aug-2005)
- Retrieve aggregated data from a group of sensors (e.g. repeat the three tests above but for GoMOOS Buoy A and B)
- Retrieve aggregated data from a group of sensors within a geographic bounding box (e.g. repeat the three tests at the top of this list but for GoMOOS Buoys within a geographic bounding box)
4) In addition, we will configure a number of other WFS and SOS servers and exercise them via the different clients to test interoperability
Results to be derived
The attributes of WFS and SOS that this experiment seeks to explore and document includes:
- Ease of access to single, latest observations
- Ease of access to historical data
- Ease of access to time series data
- Ease of access to aggregated data
- Compatibility between diverse SOS and WFS clients and servers
For the purposes of this experiment, "ease of access" will be measured in amount of development time that is required to retrieve data from the server and display in a simple, tabular format. Elaborate visualization of the data is not a goal of this experiment.
Clients and Servers to be tested
The following servers will be contributed for use in this experiment:
| Server | WFS / SOS | Responsible | Status | GetCapabilities URL |
| Mapserver serving SST data for GoMOOS buoy A01 (sourced from MADIS). | WFS | Texas A&M | Under Development | http://sos-web.tamu.edu/sos-cgi/madis?service=wfs&request=getcapabilities&ve rsion=1.0.0 - NOTE: no metadata has been configured for this server yet. |
| Mapserver serving SST data for GoMOOS buoy A01 (sourced from MADIS). | SOS | Texas A&M | Under Development | http://sos-web.tamu.edu/sos-cgi/madis?service=sos&request=getcapabilities&version=0.1.2 |
| VAST SOS server (Tony's) serving SST data for GoMOOS buoy A01 (sourced from MADIS). | SOS | Texas A&M | Available |
http://sos-ws.tamu.edu/tethys/madis?request=GetCapabilities&service=SOS&version=1.0 |
| IRIS server serving TML encoded data. | SOS | Argon | Available | GetCapabilities URLs listed at http://demo.transducerml.org:8080/ogc/ |
| ARCims server | WFS | Texas A&M | Under development |
|
| SEDAC WFS Server | WFS | SEDAC - Columbia University | Available | GetCapabilities URLs listed at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapserver/ |
| OOSTethys Servers serving buoy observations | SOS | GoMOOS, NANOOS, TAMU, MBARI | Available |
TAMU - http://mesodev.tamu.edu:8080/ows-dev/tamuSos?request=GetCapabilities GoMOOS - http://www.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/sos/oostethys_sos.cgi?VERSION=0.0.31&SERVICE=SOS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities MBARI - http://marinemetadata.org:9600/oostethys/sos?VERSION=0.0.31&SERVICE=SOS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities NANOOS - http://data.stccmop.org/ws/sos.py |
| ASA MicroWFS server developed for NOAA (note - has the capability to do time-series). Currently serving Hycom currents, GFS winds, NAM winds. Will be adding the same buoy data TAMU is serving as well. | WFS | ASA | Available | http://demo.asamap.com/wfs/ASA_WFS.asp? |
The following clients will be used in this experiment:
| Client | WFS / SOS | Responsible |
| OOSTethys Map Client | SOS | GoMOOS |
| OOSTethys Python client and time series plotter tool | SOS | NANOOS |
| Space Time Toolkit | Both |
UAH / Texas A&M http://vast.uah.edu/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=55 |
| ImageMatters client | SOS | Argon |
| Ionica client | SOS | Texas A&M |
| SEDAC Map Client | WFS | SEDAC (can be viewed at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapviewer/ |
| GAIA3 WFS Client | WFS | ASA |
