Should I use WFS, WMS or SOS considering performance and security?

I know each web service provides different features. But, If I use WMS service for my temporal data to get map images by performing some kind of aggregation in database(as it is temporal visualization), then the my application will get slow on some devices like mobile phones/tablets as it may take lot of time to fetch images."

I disagree with this statement for three reasons.

The time needed to fetch WFS data can also be high, since spatial queries can also be slow. I mean, the amount of raw bytes sent is not the only limiting factor.

Another reason is that since WFS output tends to be verbose - because uses GML, which is a 'dialect' of XML, for transporting data -, you may end sending more raw bytes than if WMS was used.

Last, vector data - like WFS output - will demand more computing power from client devices, because they will have to render the features; on the other hand, WMS responses to GetMap requests come already rendered, which implies less work on client side. Thus, using vector data on clients with limited computing power can be an issue.


Secure WMS/WFS with HTTPS use client-side certificates to authenticate individual users for each request to the server. Has the advantage that you don't have to change your WMS/WFS implementation (except by putting it on an HTTPS server) but has the considerable disadvantage that you need to distribute certificates to your users - not normally acceptable except in high-security situations.

A WFS allows uniform direct access to the features stored on a server. Use a WFS when they want to perform actions such as:

query a dataset and retrieve the features
find the feature definition (feature’s property names and types)
add features to dataset
delete feature from a dataset
update feature in a dataset
lock features to prevent modification

A WMS allows for uniform rendering access to features stored on a server. Use a WMS when you want to perform actions such as:

Producing Maps
Very simple Querying of data

It gets a little more complex when dealing with WMS and HTTPS

http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/idl_html_help/HTTP_Authentication_Security_and_Encodinga.html

and http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.0/draft-ietf-http-spec.html#AA

Have used WMS with FME Server and Geosever with HTTPS and both work well.

Tags:

Sos

Wms

Wfs