OpenStreetMap as WMS

Published on November 17, 2008 in Geotech. Closed Tags: Creative Commons, GIS, OpenStreetMap, WMS.

Another option to integrate rendered OpenStreetMap images in a GIS desktop client or web application is to add OpenStreetMap as OGC compliant Web Map Service. For the European continent such a service is now provided by the German WhereGroup.

The service is available as a free basic WMS (GetCapabilities), updated biannually, and two commercial versions, updated daily, for specific map customization needs and high performances.

OpenStreetMap is on the way to become a serious alternative map source in professional GIS environments. The question how the professional GIS community responds to Creative Commons licensing will surely open some interesting debates anytime soon.

http://www.archaeogeek.com/blog/2008/12/05/this-week-has-been-mostly-about-web-mapping/ Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK » This week has been mostly about web-mapping

[...] Openstreetmap WMS data from Wheregroup: Comes in free and paid-for flavours though details on pricing and terms of service for the commercial version were sketchy on a first skim of the website. This could be really handy to use as background mapping data for web maps, although there are issues of completeness (as always) and it probably needs running through our own mapserver to sort out the styling. This is definitely a goer- I just need to figure out which of the 50 or so layers they publish are really necessary and at what scale. And some kind of completeness metric, so we know how reliable the data is for a given area… [...]
jaakl

Btw, the WMS does not work with MapInfo Professional. It gives error something like WFS (sic!) SERVICE parameter is missing. I guess MapInfo gets confused with the long URL with a lot of extra parameters, service URL should be wrapped to a shorter format without map file and other MapServer-specific WMS parameters (I’ve seen that which are problematic with several clients).
http://www.mikee.de mikeE63

Look at http://www.osmwms.de
http://www.nutiteq.com Jaakl

These http://www.osmwms.de do not work in MapInfo Professional 8.5 either. It shows initially something in Bremen in very general level, but zooming in brings only to white images. Usually I have no issues opening different WMS servers with the software, when the servers are properly configured.