This chapter describes the Oracle Spatial implementation of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) standard for Web Coverage Service Interface Standard (WCS), which, supports retrieval of “coverages” (according to the OGC, “electronic encoding of geospatial data, that is, digital geospatial information representing space and time-varying phenomena”).

The Oracle Spatial implementation will be referred to as Web Coverage Service, or WCS.

Web Coverage Service (WCS) enables electronic retrieval of geospatial data as "coverages.” WCS provides data and descriptions, a syntax for querying the data, and the ability to return data on which you can perform various operations (visualize, interpret, extrapolate, and so on). WCS supports the storage of both GridCoverage (GeoRaster object without coordinate reference system) and RectifiedGridCoverage (GeoRaster object with coordinate reference system and georeferenced with an affine transformation) raster types

Oracle Spatial implements the following OGC standards.

• 09-110r4 WCS Core 2.0 Interface Standard - Core.

• 09-146r2 OGC GML Application Schema – Coverages.

• 09-147r3 OGC Web Coverage Service 2.0 Interface Standard – KVP Protocol Binding Extension – Corrigendum.

• 09-148r1 OGC Web Coverage Service 2.0 Interface Standard – XML/POST Protocol Binding Extension.

• 09-149r1 OGC Web Coverage Service 2.0 Interface Standard – XML/SOAP Protocol Binding Extension.

• 11-053r1 OGC Web Coverage Service Interface Standard – CRS Extension

• 12-039 OGC Web Coverage Service Interface Standard – Scaling Extension.

• 12-040 OGC Web Coverage Service Interface Standard – Range Subsetting Extension.

• 12-049 OGC Web Coverage Service Interface Standard – Interpolation Extension.

• 12-052 OGC WCS 2.0.1 Corrigendum Release Notes.

• 12-100r1 OGC GML Application Schema – Coverages – GeoTIFF Coverage Encoding Profile.

Oracle WCS also extends the OGC standards to support all GDAL-supported image or raster features as output format in a GetCoverage request.

• Web Coverage Service Architecture
  In Oracle Spatial, WCS is implemented as a Java web application and can be deployed to run in WebLogic 12.1.3 or later.
• Database Schemas for WCS
  For Web Coverage Service purposes, this document refers to Oracle Database schemas that can be user schemas and/or WCS schemas.
• Database Objects Used for WCS
  Several tables and other database objects are used to implement WCS operations.
• PL/SQL Subprograms for Using WCS
  SDO_WCS procedures and functions enable you to perform operations that include the following actions.
• Setting Up WCS Using WebLogic Server
  For setting up WCS, Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) 12.1.3 or later is required.
• WCS Administration Console
  You can launch the Oracle Spatial Web Services Administration Console web application in your browser using the URL- http://<system-name>:<port>/oraclespatial/.
• Oracle Implementation Extension for WCS
  The Oracle WCS extension defines optional elements inside a wcs:Extension element in a WCS request, to let you control the following aspects of request processing.
• WCS Operations: Requests and Responses with XML Examples
  WCS provides three major operations, and each operation has a request and response format.
• WCS Extensions Implemented
  This topic describes the WCS Extensions implemented and gives examples of some elements defined by each extension.
• Diagnosing WCS Issues
  WCS log files provide diagnostic information.