WFS-Server and ArcMAP 8.3

[Florian.Jurgeit@…]

Good morning from Austria,

have you ever testet the new "Interoperability Extension" for ArcMap with
Mapserver as a WMS/WFS-Server.

Loading WMS-Data in ArcMap works fine, but loading WFS does not work - you get
the available layers, but when loading it, the program quits with the
error-message "Unable to parse WFS-data".

Do you know any solution or is it an ESRI-problem ?
http://www.gismonitor.com/news/newsletter/archive/021904.php#ArcGIS

The problem is discussed in the MapServer Mailinglist too.

Greetings from Innsbruck/Austria
Flo

[dmorissette]

I'm not setup to test that extension, so I can't verify myself, but based on
what I read in GIS Monitor and in Bart's reply on the mailing list, I would tend
to think that Bart is right:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/data2/wilma/mapserver-users/0402/msg00524.html

(arghh... bugzilla won't let me submit a long comment... splitting in two parts)

[dmorissette]

Bart wrote:
> I've encountered the same problem.
> 
> My guess is that the ESRI GML parser expects the GML to be similar to what 
> the ESRI WFS produces, and this is a bit different from the Mapserver GML. 
> So my guess is that the ESRI GML parser is a bit too tight.
> 
> Some differences are:
> -Mapserver uses <wfs:FeatureCollection> as the root element, ESRI uses 
> <Features>
> -Mapserver uses by default MS_GEOMETRY for the "spatial attribute" 
> (although it can be changed), ESRI uses _SHAPE_
> 
> You could try using _SHAPE_ instead of MS_GEOMETRY in Mapserver WFS.

[dmorissette]

You could try setting the "wfs_geometry_element_name" metadata to "_SHAPE_" as
Bart suggests to see if that's enough to make ESRI's GML parser happy (probably
not).

There is not much we can do other that modifying MapServer to (optionally)
produce the flavour of GML that ESRI expects. However this would remain a lower
priority since MapServer's GML is very similar to what other WFS servers produce
and the real solution would be to fix ESRI's parser.

I'll also keep an eye on a potential OGC GML profile for WFS, and if one ever
becomes adopted (by OGC, not by ESRI) then we'll implement it for sure.

[dmorissette]

Just a quick update on this: there is a "Level 0 Profile of GML3 for WFS"
discussion paper that is currently making its way at OGC and that is generating
lots of interest. Non-OGC members can find an older copy of this discussion
paper (from May 2004) in the public docs section of the opengis.org website.
There will be more work on this by OGC members during the fall, so we can expect
more news on this in January 2005 after the next OGC TC meetings.

[dmorissette]

Closing this as WONTFIX: we won't do anything about the specific issue in this
bug (i.e. making ArcMap 8.3 happy).

I have created bug 884 about implementing "Level 0 Profile of GML3 for WFS" when
it is officially adopted. That won't fix the issue with ArcMap 8.3, but
hopefully future versions of ESRI's software will support this profile, so this
bug will become a non-issue.