I have tried reading up on WMS on wiki and other sources but haven't managed to get my head around a couple of points.
1) Using WMS is it possible to get a local copy of the raster data (say a tiff image tile). The reason, I ask is, I need to use his raster data in a secondary process that needs a local copy of the file.
2) I am primarily interested in allowing users the option of downloading orthoimagery and elevation from the USGS repository. I've tried using the Seamless viewer but I am thinking more along the lines of user specifying a coordinate (or four corner coords) and getting the orthoimage and elevation data corresponding to that. I thought WMS (Geoserver being my first option) is the way to go for this, but not certain. So wanted to get your advice.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
ST.
Best Answer
If you want to provide more than a picture of the data then you probably want to consider using WCS (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wcs) which allows the actual imagery to be downloaded. It is the raster equivalent of a WFS service for vector data.