Developers Corner: Improving GeoServer WMS Cascading Support

Blog ‐ Posted on 02.02.2011 by simone giannecchini

Hi all,
The ability to server WMS layers from a remote WMS server through a Geoserver installation (a.k.a. Cascading WMS) has been one of the latest improvements in Geoserver world in last couple of months. You can read about it more in one of our previous blog, where the basics have been explained already.

GeoSolutions team has since been improving the existing state and introduced some new features. A few patches have been created to fix some important issues:

  • Enabling cascading layer to be included in layer groups (GEOS-4273)
  • Make GetFeatureInfo requests work again on cascading servers (GEOS-4301)
  • Make GetFeatureInfo requests work on older version of geoservers (GEOT-3383)
  • Include “image/png; mode=24bit” to the tentative transparent formats used in WMSLayer (Mapserver transparent png support – GEOT-3393)
  • Other smaller bug fixes (GEOT-3361, GEOS-4295, GEOS-4286).

Batch import
The main improvement GeoSolutions has been working on, it’s been the possibility to perform batch import of layers from a remote WMS (GEOS-4296) through the user interface. This development allow users to try and publish all layer, or only a certain subset, all at once. After the WMS store has been configured, new link providing batch import is shown.

Selecting batch import takes us to a new page where multiple layers can be selected and configured with a single mouse click.

Clicking on “Import selected” button imports selected layers and prints out simple status report on imported layer. Notice that the Published Icon is update accordingly.



We have made a video showing how to use the batch import of WMS servers into Geoserver. You can download it from here.

Do not hesitate to try it out and stay tuned for more WMS Cascading improvements!

The GeoSolutions team.