GeoServer: Link meta data to raster image?

Question

I want to use the OpenGeo Suite to publish different sets of raster imagery with associated data. Doing this with vectorial data works fine:

1. Setup the data base in postGIS: import the vectorial data, create tables containing data describing the objects.
2. Setup a data store in GeoServer: make a connection to the data base.
3. Setup a layer in GeoServer: combine vectorial data and attributes with a SQL view.

After that I understood that I can easily access attributes via GetFeature requests to a WFS. However, the same with raster data instead of vectorial data seems not to work like that. One can import raster data from postGIS (via the ImageMosaicJDBC plugin) but I see no means to link it in the same way as above.

I'm new to web mapping, so: Is it my ignorance of the matter or the lack of a feature in GeoServer?

Answer 1

The raster analog to WFS is WCS, the Web Coverage Service. The analog to GetFeature would be GetCoverage. The principles of WFS and WCS are the same (serving of raw spatial data), but the implementations are slightly different, as one deals with vectors and one deal with rasters.

GeoServer has some documentation on WCS here:

• http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/services/wcs/reference.html

I'm not sure about the "non-spatial" aspect of your question, but perhaps this will get you a bit further.