GetCapabilities

Introduction

This operation allows clients to retrieve service metadata about a specific service instance. No "request" parameter is included, since the element name specifies the specific operation. (SOS-Spec, OGC 06-009r6)

There are two possible ways to send an GetCapabilities request: via HTTP GET and HTTP POST.

Example HTTP POST

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<GetCapabilities xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/sos/1.0" xmlns:ows="http://www.opengis.net/ows/1.1" xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/sos/1.0
http://schemas.opengis.net/sos/1.0.0/sosGetCapabilities.xsd" service="SOS" updateSequence="">
<ows:AcceptVersions>
   <ows:Version>1.0.0</ows:Version>
</ows:AcceptVersions>
<ows:Sections>   
   <ows:Section>OperationsMetadata</ows:Section>   
   <ows:Section>ServiceIdentification</ows:Section>
   <ows:Section>Filter_Capabilities</ows:Section>
   <ows:Section>Contents</ows:Section>
</ows:Sections>
</GetCapabilities>

You can extend the request above through appending the optional parmeters SECTIONS, ACCEPTFORMATS and UPDATESEQUENCE. Look at the SOS specification for more details.

Example HTTP GET

The following parameters are supported:

Parameter	Name	Definition	Multiplicity and Use of the Parameter
request	operation name	GetCapabilities	One (mandatory)
service	service type identifier	SOS	One (mandatory)
accept‌Versions	Prioritized sequence of one more specification versions accepted by client, with preferred versions listed first	1.0.0	Zero or more (optional)

The abstract Getcapabilities GET request looks like this:

http://SERVERNAME:PORT/SOS_WEBAPP_NAME/sos?REQUEST=GetCapabilities&SERVICE=SOS&ACCEPTVERSIONS=1.0.0

On your local computer with default tomcat installation and no change of the SOS webapp name the request is like:

http://localhost:8080/52nSOSv3/sos?REQUEST=GetCapabilities&SERVICE=SOS&ACCEPTVERSIONS=1.0.0

The parameters rules for the getCapabilities operation are taken from table 3 and table 5 of OGC 06-121r3.

-- StephanKuenster - 26 Jun 2009