Web Services

We deliver catalogs, maps, and data through standard programmatic interfaces, and use the MapServer software platform as part of our backend. Web Services enable machine to machine transfer of database content, and also enable the development of new and innovative Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).  A variety of OGC-enabled clients, both freeware and commercial packages, including User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig), GeoMapApp, Gaia, NASA World Wind, and ArcGIS can be used to direcly access some of our content. Our data and metadata holdings can be accessed through a variety of web service protocols:   Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WxS Services WxS Services can be used for live access to many of our data holdings --top--   Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvest (OAI-PMH) Our OAI-PMH service provides NOAA Metadata Manager Repository (NMMR)-compliant FGDC metadata records for our multibeam data sets. We use the DLESE jOAI software platform as our backend. This service can be used to explore and harvest MGDS data holdings. --top--   REST-type Services We offer REST-type Services to enable direct queries to our databases: --top-- SOAP Services The EarthChem service-oriented architecture provides SOAP services which emulate the search functionality of the web interface via easily-accessed web services. The details of the search service are: