15.1 WFS Engine

This section describes the Web Feature Service engine, including its relationship to clients and to the database server. WFS is implemented as a Java web application and can be deployed in WebLogic 12.1.3 or later. The required Java version is JDK 1.8 or later.

WFS has a metadata layer, which stores in the database the metadata needed to reply to the WFS requests. The metadata includes spatial columns, which can be queried and processed using Oracle Spatial and Graph interfaces. The metadata also stores the association of nonspatial and spatial attributes of features, as well as the services that the Web Feature Service provides to its clients.

Figure 15-1 shows the WFS architecture.

Figure 15-1 Web Feature Service Architecture

Description of Figure 15-1 follows
Description of "Figure 15-1 Web Feature Service Architecture"

As shown in Figure 15-1:

  • WFS is part of the middle tier, and includes a feature cache.

  • WFS can communicate with a web service client using WFS requests and responses in SOAP/XML format.

  • WFS performs spatial data and metadata access through JDBC calls to the database.

  • The database includes Oracle Spatial and Graph with WFS metadata and data, and with PL/SQL packages for administrative operations (see SDO_WFS_PROCESS Package (WFS Processing) and SDO_WFS_LOCK Package (WFS) ).

User identities and user labels are managed in LDAP, which works with the middle tier to perform authentication.