QGIS » QGIS Application

Hi Bernd,

Please be gentle in your wording, even if you think something has no value (anymore) Sourcepole has provided this free service for a long time. But I agree that the server results are (at least for me) not very valuable anymore. Maybe Pirmin can shine some light over the valuability of the service and servers in it?

If they offer this service to certain customers (I see german umwelt layers etc), maybe we can make it a configurable option?

If it is just a relict from old times, we could maybe remove it. I think that nowadays, it is also easier to search for wms/owc services by using the MetaSearch plugin to search in national catalog services.

Pirmin? What do you think?

Some related issues:

https://issues.qgis.org/projects/qgis/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22server+search%22&scope=&all_words=&all_words=1&titles_only=&issues=1&commit=Submit

Should this be raised on the dev list for discussion?

Richard Duivenvoorde wrote:

Hi Bernd,

Please be gentle in your wording, even if you think something has no value (anymore) Sourcepole has provided this free service for a long time. But I agree that the server results are (at least for me) not very valuable anymore. Maybe Pirmin can shine some light over the valuability of the service and servers in it?

Sorry, had a headache this day.

If they offer this service to certain customers (I see german umwelt layers etc), maybe we can make it a configurable option?

If it is just a relict from old times, we could maybe remove it. I think that nowadays, it is also easier to search for wms/owc services by using the MetaSearch plugin to search in national catalog services.

I am just wondering how this could be overlooked for so many years. I'm just preparing a QGIS-course, so i stumbled up it again. What should I tell those users: "There is a possibility to find data for you to start working with, but it's outdated for at least 5 years" ?
Well, if there was a national catalog for Germany in MetaSearch, I would happily use it.
And I would be happy to bring in as many URLs as possible for a catalog, if I only knew how to contribute.

Pirmin? What do you think?

And I would be happy to bring in as many URLs as possible for a catalog, if I only knew how to contribute.

I guess it might consist on adding the links to https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/python/plugins/MetaSearch/resources/connections-default.xml file. See https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/3515/files for example.

Some background information:
geopole.org is a CSW server with an OpenSearch API. The WMS search URL is a QGIS configuration option (Options->Network).
The catalog didn't get many updates since years. When we get a list from users, we usually add these servers.

As Richards says, the MetaSearch plugin is the "new" way to find OGC services. So maybe we should replace the WMS search with a hint for using the MetaSearch plugin.

My suggestion:

1. Remove the geopole server address from the "WMS search address" setting in the default install, so that the default server here becomes blank
2. Hide the "Server Search" tab if no "WMS search address" is set.

So by default the tab will be hidden, and users will need to enter their own preferred search server in the settings in order for the tab to be visible. This would allow enterprise installs to still utilise this functionality to allow their users to search via preferred (or internal) servers, while avoiding the original issue that the geopole server is of limited use outside certain geographic areas. Of course, users who rely on the geopole server can just re-enter the geopole address for this setting.

Thoughts?

Tested with 3.4.4. Situation did not change.