Advanced Topics

Virtual layers

Virtual Layers allow you to use a parameter expression to access multiple variables from a dataset in a special way, while specifying a descriptive layer name that will also appear in the GetCapabilities documents. This is so that generic web clients don’t necessarility need to know the intracacies of assembling sci-wms parameter expressions in requests.

Suported parameter expressions:

[layer_1],[layer_2] This will treat layer_1 as a U vector and layer_2 as a V vector and produce vector plots.

Topology Cache

The topology cache is an important optimization that speeds up response times for datasets that are accessed over opendap. The cache is current located in the folder of the sci-wms instance at path/to/sci-wms/wms/topology. There are a number of files that make up the cache, and they vary by dataset type.

Each file has a name that is taken directly from the sci-wms Dataset’s ‘Name’.

Spatial Tree (.idx and .dat)

These files contain serialized RTree spatial objects that are used for quickly making nearest neighbor queries as part of GetFeatureInfo requests.

These are necessary for large unstructured meshes, but are also used for the logically rectangular grids as well. Ideally it would be nice to move away from RTree into a better KD-Tree implementation, like sklearn’s, that will have better on disk performance lookup performance, but will be slower to initially build.

These files are constructed once when the dataset is added and not updated unless an Update Dataset request is triggered via the sci-wms admin page or API. If a dataset is set to Keep up to date then it will update this cache every X seconds, depending on what the dataset is configured for.

Adding a new dataset through the website when running in Quickstart mode may timeout due to the topology cache taking along time to complete. If you run across this case, it is better to add the Dataset manually through the command line (no documentation at this point) or to use the Advanced mode of running sci-wms.

NetCDF (.nc)

This file contains the up-to-date coordinate variable data for the dataset. This is typically Latitude/Longitude, and Time. For forecasts that are routinely updates, the time variable typically is growing with each update. This file is updated periodially if the Dataset is set to “Keep up to date” or an update is manually triggered via the sci-wms admin page or API.

Default Layer Settings

sci-wms takes a three tier approach to figure out what the min, max, and logscale values should be for a request.

In order of precedence:

1. URL request arguments

   Always preferred for maximum client control. Controlled with the LOGSCALE and COLORSCALERANGE URL parameters.

2. Layer defaults

   Used when populated on a Layer. Controlled on each Dataset page on a per-variable basis. For each netCDF variable, we look for the following when processing a variable in order of most precedence first:

   1. scale_min and scale_max

   2. scale_range

   3. valid_min and valid_max

   4. valid_range

3. Global defaults

   Used when the previous two are not populated. Controlled on the global defaults page on a standard_name and units basis.

WMS Extensions

sci-wms implements a number of additional WMS parameters that are not defined in the WMS specification while remaining completely backwards compatible.

WMS Extensions

Parameter	Requests	Possible Values	Usage	Examples
LOGSCALE	GetLegendGraphic GetMap	true, false	If the request should use logscaling	true false
COLORSCALERANGE	GetLegendGraphic GetMap	[min],[max]	A tuple in the format [min],[max] that defines the scale range to visualize	1,100 4.5,30
SHOWLABEL	GetLegendGraphic	true, false	If the units label should be shows in the legend	true false
SHOWVALUES	GetLegendGraphic	true, false	If the value ticks should be shows in the legend	true false
COLORBARONLY	GetLegendGraphic	true, false	If true, effectively sets SHOWVALUES and SHOWLABEL to false. This will override the individual setttings of SHOWVALUES and SHOWLABEL. No effect if this is set to false.	true false
UNITLABEL	GetLegendGraphic	[text]	Set the unit label on a legend to a custom value	meters degC
HORIZONTAL	GetLegendGraphic	true, false	Return a horizontal legend (vertical is the default)	true false
NUMCONTOURS	GetLegendGraphic GetMap	[int]	Return request with the specified number of contours. Only valid for the image_type of contours or filledcontours).	8 30
STYLE/STYLES	GetLegendGraphic GetMap	[image_type]_[colormap]	While some styles are defined in the GetCapabilities document, a use can specify any combination of an image_type (filledcontours, contours, pcolor, vectors, filledhatches, hatches) and a matplotlib colormap (http://matplotlib.org/examples/color/colormaps_reference.html)	contours_jet vectors_blues
VECTORSCALE	GetMap	[float]	Controls the scale of vector arrows when plotting a vectors style. The vectorscale value represents the number of data units per arrow length unit. Smaller numbers lead to longer arrows, while larger numbers represent shorter arrows. This is consistent with the use of the scale keyword used by matplotlib (http://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html).	10.5 30
VECTORSTEP	GetMap	[int]	Set the number of vector steps to be used when rendering a GetMap request using a vectors style. A value of 1 will render with all vectors and is the default behavior.	2 10

Developers

To start sci-wms with the Django development server on port :7002, type the following commands

$ python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:7002

This server is not considered secure for production implementations, and it is recommended you use an alternative wsgi server like Gunicorn.