Interactive style generation for layer visualisation through a WMS

Abstract

When visualizing the different layers of geographic information through a map server, the layers are obtained with a pre-defined style virtually never meeting the user's visual needs. A tool has been developed allowing definition and interactive application of the different styles created by the user. The tool allows listing of all layers of a Web Map Service and depending on the type of geometry of everyone of them, the parameters in accordance with the style defined by the user could be chosen, such as colour, thickness, size and text's font style. As a result, a cartographic document in real time is achieved from a map server with the styles defined by the user for every layer, as well as the possibility of interactively changing the layers. It also allows saving of the developed styles in a file that could be applied to another cartographic document at any time. The functioning of the tool is based on server's standard requests, such as GetCapabilities, GetStyles and GetMap that will be successively run according to the user's interaction with the application. The application is essentially based on the specification Style Layer Descriptor [1]. Different XML documents defining styles will be developed with the application. These generated styles will be sent within the GetMap request so as to show the wanted image to the user. Keywords: Web Map Server (WMS), Web Feature Server (WFS), Web Coverage Server (WCS), Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD), Filter Encoding (FE), java application interactive, filter request, geometry finding, tool-client interaction, symbology, cartographic semiology.