Benefits and Limits of OGC-Web Services to the new SoDa Service on Solar Energy

Abstract

The SoDa Service (website: www.soda-is.com) is providing an easy and standardized access to valuable information related to solar energy for professionals. Several providers offer via the SoDa Service an access to for-free and forpay Web services and off-line services delivering data on solar radiation, atmospheric optics, position of the sun and many others. Since the launch of the Service in 2003, the SoDa team is making efforts to improve the quality of the service to customers. After the duplication of the whole system in 2010 for a better reliability, and the development of a more esthetic website in summer 2012, the team is now populating the new SoDa Service with new Web services. This is a perfect opportunity to explore different standards in order to increase the dissemination and acceptation of the existing and new services by the community of users. After several trials, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards were selected. This communication discusses the OGC-compliant Web services and how the decision for developments within the new SoDa website was taken.