web services WFS vs. REST

Question

Hello,

I am not a GIS technician just a project manager for a software development involving GIS. For the project that I am working on we are using open source and want the data in the same format.  The people that manage the majority of the data publish the data to ArcGIS REST and are concerned over republishing and managing the data in WFS/WMS as well as REST.  My question is what do I need to know to have a logical conversation with the people that manage the GeoServer? Part of this is what are the difficulties and drawback to managing both web services? And are there any mitigating things that we can do to decrease the overhead management of both systems?

Thanks

Kim

kimhobus · Answer

Thank you Anthony for the reply and the clarification between a GeoServer and an arc GIS server.

I'm still getting a lot of pushback that to publish in WMS and WFS has a large overhead when publishing to REST at the same time. Can you please provide me with a basic understanding of any overhead issues and if you know of any mitigation processes that could be utilized?

Thanks

AntGiles · Answer

Kim,

Publishing a service with OGC capabilities such as WMS and WFS is pretty much ​a case of checking a few check boxes on in the service capabilities, it should not be a massive overhead.

Just be careful when you use the term 'GeoServer' as this is the name of an open source geographic web server, I would always refer to the server as the arcgis server to avoid confusion.

regards

Anthony