Seitenhistorie

Question (NPOC)

How to report spatial data services and network services in the monitoring exercise?

Answer (EC Inspire Team)

There are 5 types of network services in the INSPIRE Directive but if you look at COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1205/2008 of 3 December 2008 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards metadata, the "classification of services" (spatial data services) metadata element, that aims at assisting in the search by grouping the spatial data services in major categories, it happens to be of the same type of the network services, as these where the ones assessed to be the most frequent when the Directive was drafted, while leaving some space for other services ("other service"). At the same time, the "keyword" metadata element aims at describing the subject in a structured manner, compared to the abstract, explaining the rather extensive list in part D.4 of thus regulation.

More precisely, in Annex: PART D - Value domains you will see that for spatial data services you have a subdivision in 6 types: discovery service, view service, download service, transformation service, invoke service and "other service" (3. SPATIAL DATA SERVICE TYPE p. 12).

All the network services are also spatial data services. The reverse is not true. E.g. if you think about the human interface of type view therefore not supporting all the characteristics required from a Network Service (e.g. support of the language parameter), this human interface is not a network service, but it is a spatial data service.

So if we look again at the Commission Regulation mentioned above in Annex: Part D - Value domains on p. 12 at Point 4 we have a "CLASSIFICATION OF SPATIAL DATA SERVICES".

If we take a network service type view it can be classified as 202 Map access service (infoMapAccessService).

If we take a human interface build on top of this service then this can be classified as 102 Geographic viewer (humanGeographicViewer).

View applications that do not fall under network services are still classified as spatial data services of type "view service".

Also please note that the reference to the OGC standards, CSW, WMS, WFS, is correct as long as you mean that the network services are "based on" implementation of the OGC standards, as there are some additions/modifications requested, documented in the IOC TF technical guidelines, for such an implementation to be conformant with the Network Services Regulation.