QGIS as OGC Data Client¶

Privire de ansamblu asupra suportului WMS¶

QGIS currently can act as a WMS client that understands WMS 1.1, 1.1.1 and 1.3 servers. In particular, it has been tested against publicly accessible servers such as DEMIS.

A WMS server acts upon requests by the client (e.g., QGIS) for a raster map with a given extent, set of layers, symbolization style, and transparency. The WMS server then consults its local data sources, rasterizes the map, and sends it back to the client in a raster format. For QGIS, this format would typically be JPEG or PNG.

WMS is generically a REST (Representational State Transfer) service rather than a full-blown Web service. As such, you can actually take the URLs generated by QGIS and use them in a web browser to retrieve the same images that QGIS uses internally. This can be useful for troubleshooting, as there are several brands of WMS server on the market and they all have their own interpretation of the WMS standard.

Straturile WMS pot fi adăugate pur și simplu, atât timp cât: știți URL-ul de acces la serverul WMS, ați stabilit o conexiune validă la acel server, iar serverul înțelege ptotocolul HTTP, ca mecanism de transport al datelor.

Privire de ansamblu asupra suportului WMTS¶

QGIS can also act as a WMTS client. WMTS is an OGC standard for distributing tile sets of geospatial data. This is a faster and more efficient way of distributing data than WMS because with WMTS, the tile sets are pre-generated, and the client only requests the transmission of the tiles, not their production. A WMS request typically involves both the generation and transmission of the data. A well-known example of a non-OGC standard for viewing tiled geospatial data is Google Maps.

Pentru a afișa datele la o varietate de scări, apropiate de ceea ce și-ar putea dori utilizatorul, seturile de plăcuțe WMTS sunt produse la mai multe niveluri de scări diferite, și sunt puse la dispoziția clientului GIS pentru a le apela.

Această diagramă ilustrează conceptul seturilor de plăcuțe:

Figure WMTS 1:

Conceptul seturilor de plăcuțe WMTS:

The two types of WMTS interfaces that QGIS supports are via Key-Value-Pairs (KVP) and RESTful. These two interfaces are different, and you need to specify them to QGIS differently.

1) In order to access a WMTS KVP service, a QGIS user must open the WMS/WMTS interface and add the following string to the URL of the WMTS tile service:

"?SERVICE=WMTS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities"

Un exemplu al acestui tip de adresă este

http://opencache.statkart.no/gatekeeper/gk/gk.open_wmts?\
  service=WMTS&request=GetCapabilities

Pentru testare, stratul topo2 din acest WMTS funcționează bine. Adăugarea acestui șir indică faptul că se va utiliza un serviciu web WMTS în locul unui serviciu WMS.

2. Serviciul RESTful WMTS are o formă diferită de adresă URL, simplă. Formatul recomandat de OGC este:

{WMTSBaseURL}/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml

This format helps you to recognize that it is a RESTful address. A RESTful WMTS is accessed in QGIS by simply adding its address in the WMS setup in the URL field of the form. An example of this type of address for the case of an Austrian basemap is http://maps.wien.gv.at/basemap/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml.

Selectarea serverelor WMS/WMTS¶

The first time you use the WMS feature in QGIS, there are no servers defined.

Begin by clicking the ^{Add WMS layer} button on the toolbar, or selecting Layer ‣ Add WMS Layer....

Va apărea dialogul de Adăugare Strat(uri) de la un Server. Puteți adăuga demonstrativ unele servere, făcând clic pe butonul **[Adaugă servere implicite]**. În acest fel, adăugați două servere WMS demo pentru a le utiliza: serverele WMS ale DM Solutions Group și LizardTech. Pentru a defini un nou server WMS, în fila :guilabel:`Straturilor selectați butonul [Nou]. Apoi introduceți parametrii de conectare la serverul WMS dorit, așa cum se arată în table_OGC_1:

Tabelul OGC 1: Parametri de conectare WMS

If you need to set up a proxy server to be able to receive WMS services from the internet, you can add your proxy server in the options. Choose Settings ‣ Options and click on the Network & Proxy tab. There, you can add your proxy settings and enable them by setting Use proxy for web access. Make sure that you select the correct proxy type from the Proxy type drop-down menu.

Once the new WMS server connection has been created, it will be preserved for future QGIS sessions.

Încărcarea Straturilor WMS/WMTS¶

Once you have successfully filled in your parameters, you can use the [Connect] button to retrieve the capabilities of the selected server. This includes the image encoding, layers, layer styles and projections. Since this is a network operation, the speed of the response depends on the quality of your network connection to the WMS server. While downloading data from the WMS server, the download progress is visualized in the lower left of the WMS dialog.

Ecranul dvs. ar trebui să arate un pic ca în figure_OGR_1, care arată răspunsul oferit de serverul WMS al Portalului Solurilor Europene.

Figure OGR 1:

Dialog for adding a WMS server, showing its available layers

Codificare Imagine

The Image encoding section lists the formats that are supported by both the client and server. Choose one depending on your image accuracy requirements.

Opțiuni

The Options area of the dialog provides a text field where you can add a Layer name for the WMS layer. This name will appear in the legend after loading the layer.

Below the layer name, you can define Tile size if you want to set tile sizes (e.g., 256x256) to split up the WMS request into multiple requests.

Limitarea entităților pentru GetFeatureInfo definește ce entități de pe server vor fi interogate.

If you select a WMS from the list, a field with the default projection provided by the mapserver appears. If the [Change...] button is active, you can click on it and change the default projection of the WMS to another CRS provided by the WMS server.

Finally you can activate Use contextual WMS-Legend if the WMS Server supports this feature. Then only the relevant legend for your current map view extent will be shown and thus will not include legend items for things you can’t see in the current map.

Ordinea straturilor

The Layer Order tab lists the selected layers available from the current connected WMS server. You may notice that some layers are expandable; this means that the layer can be displayed in a choice of image styles.

You can select several layers at once, but only one image style per layer. When several layers are selected, they will be combined at the WMS server and transmitted to QGIS in one go.

Transparenţă

In this version of QGIS, the Global transparency setting from the Layer Properties is hard coded to be always on, where available.

Sistemul de Coordonate de Referință

A coordinate reference system (CRS) is the OGC terminology for a QGIS projection.

Fiecare strat WMS poate fi prezentat în mai multe CRS-uri, în funcție de capacitatea serverului WMS.

To choose a CRS, select [Change...] and a dialog similar to Figure Projection 3 in Lucrul cu Proiecții will appear. The main difference with the WMS version of the dialog is that only those CRSs supported by the WMS server will be shown.

Căutare server¶

Within QGIS, you can search for WMS servers. Figure_OGC_2 shows the Server Search tab with the Add Layer(s) from a Server dialog.

Figure OGR 2:

Dialog for searching WMS servers after some keywords

As you can see, it is possible to enter a search string in the text field and hit the [Search] button. After a short while, the search result will be populated into the list below the text field. Browse the result list and inspect your search results within the table. To visualize the results, select a table entry, press the [Add selected row to WMS list] button and change back to the Layers tab. QGIS has automatically updated your server list, and the selected search result is already enabled in the list of saved WMS servers in the Layers tab. You only need to request the list of layers by clicking the [Connect] button. This option is quite handy when you want to search maps by specific keywords.

Practic, această opțiune este un front-end pentru API-ul de la http://geopole.org.

Seturi de plăcuțe¶

Atunci când se utilizează servicii WMTS (Cached WMS), cum ar fi

http://opencache.statkart.no/gatekeeper/gk/gk.open_wmts?\
  service=WMTS&request=GetCapabilities

you are able to browse through the Tilesets tab given by the server. Additional information like tile size, formats and supported CRS are listed in this table. In combination with this feature, you can use the tile scale slider by selecting Settings ‣ Panels (KDE and Windows) or View ‣ Panels (Gnome and MacOSX), then choosing Tile scale. This gives you the available scales from the tile server with a nice slider docked in.

Folosirea instrumentului de identificare¶

Once you have added a WMS server, and if any layer from a WMS server is queryable, you can then use the ^Identify tool to select a pixel on the map canvas. A query is made to the WMS server for each selection made. The results of the query are returned in plain text. The formatting of this text is dependent on the particular WMS server used.

Selecția Formatului

If multiple output formats are supported by the server, a combo box with supported formats is automatically added to the identify results dialog and the selected format may be stored in the project for the layer.

Suport pentru formatul GML

The ^Identify tool supports WMS server response (GetFeatureInfo) in GML format (it is called Feature in the QGIS GUI in this context). If “Feature” format is supported by the server and selected, results of the Identify tool are vector features, as from a regular vector layer. When a single feature is selected in the tree, it is highlighted in the map and it can be copied to the clipboard and pasted to another vector layer. See the example setup of the UMN Mapserver below to support GetFeatureInfo in GML format.

# in layer METADATA add which fields should be included and define geometry (example):

"gml_include_items"   "all"
"ows_geometries"      "mygeom"
"ows_mygeom_type"     "polygon"

# Then there are two possibilities/formats available, see a) and b):

# a) basic (output is generated by Mapserver and does not contain XSD)
# in WEB METADATA define formats (example):
"wms_getfeatureinfo_formatlist" "application/vnd.ogc.gml,text/html"

# b) using OGR (output is generated by OGR, it is send as multipart and contains XSD)
# in MAP define OUTPUTFORMAT (example):
OUTPUTFORMAT
    NAME "OGRGML"
    MIMETYPE "ogr/gml"
    DRIVER "OGR/GML"
    FORMATOPTION "FORM=multipart"
END

# in WEB METADATA define formats (example):
"wms_getfeatureinfo_formatlist" "OGRGML,text/html"

Vizualizarea Proprietăţilor

După ce ați adăugat un server WMS, îi puteți vizualiza proprietățile printr-un clic-dreapta pe el, în legendă, și prin selectarea Proprietăților.

Fila Metadatelor

The tab Metadata displays a wealth of information about the WMS server, generally collected from the capabilities statement returned from that server. Many definitions can be gleaned by reading the WMS standards (see OPEN-GEOSPATIAL-CONSORTIUM in Literatură și Referințe Web), but here are a few handy definitions:

• Proprietăţile serverului

  • Versiunea WMS — Versiunea WMS acceptată de server.

  • Image Formats — The list of MIME-types the server can respond with when drawing the map. QGIS supports whatever formats the underlying Qt libraries were built with, which is typically at least image/png and image/jpeg.
  • Identity Formats — The list of MIME-types the server can respond with when you use the Identify tool. Currently, QGIS supports the text-plain type.

• Proprietăţile stratului

  • Selectat — Indiferent dacă acest strat a fost sau nu selectat, atunci când serverul său a fost adăugat în acest proiect.

  • Visible — Whether or not this layer is selected as visible in the legend (not yet used in this version of QGIS).

  • Poate Identifica — Dacă acest strat va returna un rezultat, sau nu, atunci când este folosit instrumentul Identificare asupra lui.

  • Can be Transparent — Whether or not this layer can be rendered with transparency. This version of QGIS will always use transparency if this is Yes and the image encoding supports transparency.
  • Can Zoom In — Whether or not this layer can be zoomed in by the server. This version of QGIS assumes all WMS layers have this set to Yes. Deficient layers may be rendered strangely.

  • Numărare în Cascadă — Serverele WMS pot acționa ca un proxy pentru alte servere WMS, pentru a obține datele raster ale unui strat. Această intrare arată de câte ori este transmisă cererea pentru acest strat către alte servere WMS, pentru obținerea unui rezultat.

  • Fixed Width, Fixed Height — Whether or not this layer has fixed source pixel dimensions. This version of QGIS assumes all WMS layers have this set to nothing. Deficient layers may be rendered strangely.
  • WGS 84 Bounding Box — The bounding box of the layer, in WGS 84 coordinates. Some WMS servers do not set this correctly (e.g., UTM coordinates are used instead). If this is the case, then the initial view of this layer may be rendered with a very ‘zoomed-out’ appearance by QGIS. The WMS webmaster should be informed of this error, which they may know as the WMS XML elements LatLonBoundingBox, EX_GeographicBoundingBox or the CRS:84 BoundingBox.

  • Disponibil în CRS — Proiecțiile în care poate fi randat acest strat de către serverul WMS. Acestea sunt prezentate în format nativ WMS.

  • Disponibil în stil — Stilurile de imagine în care poate fi randat acest strat de către serverul WMS.

Arată legenda grafică WMS în cuprins și în compozitor¶

The QGIS WMS data provider is able to display a legend graphic in the table of contents’ layer list and in the map composer. The WMS legend will be shown only if the WMS server has GetLegendGraphic capability and the layer has getCapability url specified, so you additionally have to select a styling for the layer.

If a legendGraphic is available, it is shown below the layer. It is little and you have to click on it to open it in real dimension (due to QgsLegendInterface architectural limitation). Clicking on the layer’s legend will open a frame with the legend at full resolution.

In the print composer, the legend will be integrated at it’s original (dowloaded) dimension. Resolution of the legend graphic can be set in the item properties under Legend -> WMS LegendGraphic to match your printing requirements

The legend will display contextual information based on your current scale. The WMS legend will be shown only if the WMS server has GetLegendGraphic capability and the layer has getCapability url specified, so you have to select a styling.

Limitările clientului WMS¶

Not all possible WMS client functionality had been included in this version of QGIS. Some of the more noteworthy exceptions follow.

Editarea Setărilor Stratului WMS

Once you’ve completed the ^{Add WMS layer} procedure, there is no way to change the settings. A work-around is to delete the layer completely and start again.

Cerințele de autentificare ale Serverelor WMS

Currently, publicly accessible and secured WMS services are supported. The secured WMS servers can be accessed by public authentication. You can add the (optional) credentials when you add a WMS server. See section Selectarea serverelor WMS/WMTS for details.