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Find a data web source that hosts a WMS server (go to an ice cream vendor). We will use the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission datasets hosted at the Woods Hole Institute THREDDS OPeNDAP server as example in this primer. THREDDS OPeNDAP server can be configured to serve WMS for orthogonal datasets with proper geographic information.
Request an overview of the content of a WMS server
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Ask for what the server has to offer (see which flavours he has and which kind of cups). Ypu need to add the following mandatory <keyword,value> pairs to the base server url, separated by an &, e.g.: ?service=WMS&request=GetCapabilities.
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This url will return an xml file that contains an inventory of the available datasets. (You can also request availabe datasets for one WMS version only by appending the optional version keyword.)
Inspect the overview of the content of a WMS server
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Look at what versions of WMS the server has to offer (check whether the ice cream is fresh). For each version there is a
tag WCS_Capabilities with attribute version, e,.g.
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