Geospatial services: OGC Standards and de facto Protocols

Standard communication protocols with map servers can be divided into two main categories:

• Official protocols defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
• De facto protocols that have emerged due to widespread use (such as XYZ)

Formal OGC protocols

Traditional OGC Services

These services are based on SOAP or HTTP protocols with specific requests often constructed as URLs with parameters. They primarily exchange XML or other specialized formats (XML for requests/responses, images for maps). These standards have been widely used for many years to ensure geospatial interoperability.

http://mapserver?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=layer0,layer1

Modern RESTful Services

These adopt a RESTful architecture based on modern web principles. They use simple HTTP methods (GET, POST, etc.) and return responses in JSON. This approach makes integration with applications easier due to its simplicity and compatibility with current web technologies. OGC API - Features is a key example of this new generation, providing standardized REST APIs for accessing vector data.

http://mapserver/collections/layer0/items.json

De facto standards

Although not officially standardized by organizations like the OGC, protocols such as TMS (Tile Map Service) and the XYZ URL scheme are widely adopted in web mapping. Their simplicity and compatibility with modern web technologies have made them essential de facto standards for serving map tiles.