GeoServer gives No XSDElementDeclaration found Exception

Question

I have added the following WFS source to the Stores in GeoServer. http://geoservices.rijkswaterstaat.nl/verkeersscheidingsstelsel_noordzee?service=wfs&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities

This went well, and I can now see the list of supported feature types in the web interface, when trying to add a new layer. However, when selecting one of these feature types, I get an error. The feature type I have tried to add in this case is named nzvss_ank (named wfs_nzvss_ank in GeoServer). The relevant part of the stack trace is:

Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: org.geotools.data.DataSourceException: No XSDElementDeclaration found for {http://www.opengis.net/wfs}nzvss_ank
    at org.geotools.data.store.ContentFeatureSource.getAbsoluteSchema(ContentFeatureSource.java:342)
    at org.geotools.data.store.ContentFeatureSource.getSchema(ContentFeatureSource.java:309)
    at org.geotools.data.store.ContentFeatureSource.getSchema(ContentFeatureSource.java:109)
    at org.geoserver.catalog.CatalogBuilder.buildFeatureType(CatalogBuilder.java:348)
    at org.geoserver.catalog.CatalogBuilder.buildFeatureType(CatalogBuilder.java:330)
    at org.geoserver.web.data.layer.NewLayerPage.buildLayerInfo(NewLayerPage.java:323)
    ... 97 more

The full stack trace can be found in this Gist.

The same exception occurs when trying to add other feature types, and when using other WFS links from the same provider.

Other information: GeoServer version is 2.6.0, charset set for the XML documents is UTF-8, feature buffer size is set to 10.

What can I do to fix this issue?

Answer 1

Old MapServer versions were not very good in making fully standard compliant WFS services. I am not sure if this case is an example of such or not but you could anyways to contact rijkswaterstaat and tell them that they run MapServer 5.7-dev which is rather old and that current versions (6.4, soon 7.0) are much better than their version from year 2011.

GeoServer has a nasty habit to validate XML schemas always when it is possible. With this service it seems to have some trouble with parsing or validating the feature type schema that is queried with DescribeFeatureType request. A GeoServer developer or someone who has tools for validating XML would be needed to tell what is wrong. The whole response from the service is here:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 13:42:35 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Mapserver: Mapserver 5.7
Content-Type: text/xml; subtype=gml/3.1.1
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Connection: Keep-Alive
Age: 0
Content-Length: 1120

<?xml version='1.0' encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<schema
   targetNamespace="http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver" 
   xmlns:rws="http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver" 
   xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc"
   xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
   xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
   elementFormDefault="qualified" version="0.1" >

  <import namespace="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
          schemaLocation="http://schemas.opengis.net/gml/3.1.1/base/gml.xsd" />

  <element name="nzvss_ank" 
           type="rws:nzvss_ankType" 
           substitutionGroup="gml:_Feature" />

  <complexType name="nzvss_ankType">
    <complexContent>
      <extension base="gml:AbstractFeatureType">
        <sequence>
          <element name="GEOMETRY" type="gml:SurfacePropertyType" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
          <element name="NAAM_ANKERGEBIED" type="string"/>
          <element name="ENTITEIT_VAARGEUL" type="string"/>
          <element name="SYSTEEM" type="string"/>
        </sequence>
      </extension>
    </complexContent>
  </complexType>

</schema>