FGDC endorses the OpenGIS Web Feature Service 2.0 Interface Standard

Background

The OpenGIS Web Feature Service 2.0 Interface Standard (WFS 2.0) is applicable to the development of systems that have requirements to access or distribute geospatial feature data over a network. A Web Feature Service (WFS) request consists of a description of query or data transformation operations that are to be applied to one or more features. The request is generated on the client side and posted to a web feature server using HTTP. The web feature server then reads the request and returns a set of results that conforms to the OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) Implementation Specification. 

Web feature services offer direct fine-grained access to geographic information at the feature and feature property level and allow clients to retrieve or modify only the data they are seeking, rather than retrieving an entire file. 

WFS 2.0 is equivalent to ISO 19142:2010, Geographic information -- Web Feature Service.  

The FGDC has already endorsed WFS 1.1. WFS 1.1 will be retained as a legacy standard. 

The OpenGIS Web Feature Service 2.0 Interface Standard may be downloaded from http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs

Additional information