Application Programming Interface. A set of routines, procedures, protocols, and tools for building software applications.
Coverage
A type of spatial data that represents different values at different locations. Satellite imagery, aerial photography, and digital elevation models (DEMs) are examples of coverage data.
CRS
Coordinate reference system. The combination of a geographic and projected coordinate systems that define how two-dimensional maps relate to locations on the earth’s surface. Geographic coordinate systems use a three-dimensional spherical surface to define those locations, referencing points on that surface through angles (latitude and longitude values) measured from the earth’s center. Projected coordinate systems are based on flat two-dimensional surfaces, with locations referenced by x, y coordinates measured as constant lengths and distances across that surface. See also SRID and SRS.
Data Store
A GeoServer data store represents a connection to a source of raster or vector data, such as a file or group of files, a database table, and so on.
Feature Type
A GeoServer feature type (featureType) represents a data source table.
GDAL
Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, pronounced “GOO-duhl”, an open source raster access library with support for a large number of formats, used widely in both open source and proprietary software.
Javascript Object Notation. A text format that is very fast to parse in JavaScript virtual machines. In spatial, the extended specification for GeoJSON is commonly used.
GeoRSS
RSS feed containing geographic information in GML (Geographic Markup Language) format.
GIS
Geographic information system or geographical information system captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that is linked to location.
A GeoServer data store supporting the creation of a mosaic based on a number of georeferenced raster data sources. See also Data Store and Mosaic.
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation. A text format that is very fast to parse in JavaScript virtual machines. In spatial, the extended specification for GeoJSON is commonly used.
JSP
JavaServer Pages. A scripting system for Java server applications that allows the interleaving of markup and Java procedural code.
JSTL
JavaServer Page Template Library. A tag library for JSP that encapsulates many of the standard functions handled in JSP (database queries, iteration, conditionals) into a terse syntax.
KML
Keyhole Markup Language. This is the spatial XML format used by Google Earth. Google Earth was originally written by a company named “Keyhole”, hence the (now obscure) reference in the name.
Layer
A published GeoServer resource representing a raster or vector spatial data source.
Mosaic
A collection of georeferenced raster data sources merged together to create a seamless raster dataset. See also ImageMosaic.
Namespace
A GeoServer namespace defines the XML namespace of a feature type. An XML namespace uniquely describes elements and attributes in an XML document. See also Feature Type. Can also refer to a GeoServer Workspace.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a standards organization responsible for developing specifications for geospatial services.
OSGeo
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion and support of open source geospatial software.
Projection
A method of representing the earth’s three-dimensional surface on a two-dimensional plan. See also CRS.
Raster Layer
A published GeoServer representation of raster format data stored as a cell-based representation of features on the earth surface. Each cell has a distinct value, and all cells with the same value represent a specific feature. Raster layers are analogous to coverages. See also Layer and Coverage.
REST
REpresentational State Transfer. An open, resource-oriented model for implementing Web services.
Scalable Vector Graphics
This is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic (i.e. interactive or animated). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics.
Structured query language. This is the standard programming language for querying relational databases. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL.
SQL/MM
SQL Multimedia; includes several sections on extended types, including a substantial section on spatial types.
SRID
Spatial reference ID. This a unique number assigned to a particular “coordinate reference system”. The PostGIS table spatial_ref_sys contains a large collection of well-known SRID values and text representations of the coordinate reference systems.
A published GeoServer representation of a collection of vector feature types (featureType) stored as mathematical paths—a point as a single x, y coordinate, lines as a series of x, y coordinates, and polygons as a series of x, y coordinates that start and end on the same location. See also Layer.
The Web Processing Service (WPS) specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium provides rules for standardizing inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services.
Well-Known Binary
This refers to the binary representation of geometries described in the Simple Features for SQL specification (SFSQL).
Well-Known Text
This refers either to the text representation of geometries, with strings starting “POINT”, “LINESTRING”, “POLYGON”, and so on, or the text representation of a CRS, with strings starting “PROJCS”, “GEOGCS”, and so on. Well-known text representations are OGC standards, but do not have their own specification documents. The first descriptions of Well-Known Text (for geometries and for CRS) appeared in the SFSQL 1.0 specification. Often abbreviated as WKT.