Latest version of Web Feature Service standard aligns with the current architecture of the Web and the joint OGC-W3C Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices.
3 July 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the latest version of the Web Feature Service standard: WFS 3.0. The WFS 3.0 development has been conducted in a public manner with contributions from the wider geospatial community occurring through a GitHub repository and in a public hackathon.
An OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) offers the capability to retrieve, create, modify and query spatial data on the Web.
All versions of the WFS standard have so far used a Remote-Procedure-Call-over-HTTP architectural style using XML for any payloads as it was state-of-the-art in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when WFS was originally designed. The next version (WFS 3.0) is intended to provide a modern alternative and will specify a modernized service that aligns with the current architecture of the Web and the joint OGC-W3C Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices. The key changes relate to its architecture, encodings, reuse, modularization, schemas, and security.
As a result of this modernization, WFS 3.0 implementations will not be backwards compatible with WFS 2.0 implementations per se. However, a design goal is to define WFS 3.0 in a way so that the WFS 3.0 interface can be mapped to an WFS 2.0 implementation.
WFS 3.0 is intended to be simpler and more modern, but still an evolution from the previous versions and their implementations.
The WFS standard is a multi-part document. This first part specifies the core capabilities that every WFS has to support and is restricted to read-access to spatial data. Additional capabilities that address specific needs will be specified in additional parts. Examples include support for creating and modifying data, more complex data models, richer queries, and additional coordinate reference systems.
An overview of the modernization of WFS3.0, including the key changes, is available in the GitHub repository: The next version of WFS - an overview.
The candidate WFS3.0 standard is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal [PDF] or the GitHub repository [HTML]. Comments should be submitted via the WFS 3.0 Issues Tracker in GitHub for this standard. Issues may be submitted for consideration through 31 December 2018. All Issues will be assessed by the editing team.
About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 525 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that ‘geo-enable’ the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful within any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at
www.opengeospatial.org.
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