This page last changed on Nov 20, 2005 by cholmes.

All OGC Web Services (OWS) (WMS, WFS, soon WCS) have several common configuration elements in the Web Admin Tool. Sometime we will allow one to configure these once and choose to inherit from the common configuration or not, but for now you must fill out each service separately. Mostly it is the meta information for the capabilities documents that each serve. If you are just evaluating GeoServer then the meta information need not be configured, but if you are serving GeoServer publically then we highly recommend that you take the time to fill these out appropriately, so that clients don't confuse your layers for the GeoServer defaults. Indeed the only way we will build a true GeoSpatial Web with search and all is if the meta information is filled out correctly. If you are only using one of the WFS and WMS then we recommend that you disable the one not being used in the Contents section. Each Service has a Contents and a Description. The Contents section controls options specific to each, and the Description section focuses on the Capabilities document's meta information.

Description

The Description section represents the Service section of a Capabilities document, common across all OGC Web Services. From the WFS 1.0 spec:

Option Name Description
Name A name the service provider assigns to the web feature service instance.
Title A human-readable title to briefly identify this server in menus.
Abstract A descriptive narrative for more information about the server.
Keyword Any number of short words to aid catalog searching.
Fees A text block indicating any fees imposed by the service provider for usage of the service or for data retrieved from. The keyword NONE is reserved to mean no fees.
AccessConstraints A text block describing any access constraints imposed by the service provider on the WFS or data retrieved from that service. The keyword NONE is reserved to indicate no access constraints are imposed.

Contents

The Contents section contains an Enabled check box - if you are not using one of the services (or are using another piece of software, such as MapServer, to serve the other service), then we recommend disabling it so that users can not access it. The section also contains the Online Resource section. We admit that this would probably be more appropriate in the GetCapabilities section. According to the specs it is supposed to be the 'home page' of the service. Some web page that you've put up telling about the WMS and/or WFS that GeoServer is providing. If you don't have one set up then we recommend just putting the welcome page to the GeoServer welcome page, as that's what it was designed for.

Document generated by Confluence on Jan 16, 2008 23:27