The meteorological graphics library Magics++ has proven to be a good tool to implement an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Standard (WMS) server within ecCharts, ECMWF's new web based application for forecasters. The talk will discuss the challenges this presented. While PNG is the main format served, the talk will also present work to investigate the use of the vector graphic format SVG for this purpose.

It is a challenge to develop a client for web services that allows users easy and full access to the available maps or data layers. Even if established web services, such as the ones defined by the OGC, are used, meteorological data has a more complex set-up in volume and in the temporal dimensions than most other GIS data.

The talk will present a module within ECMWF's meteorological workstation Metview, which was developed to provide users with easy access to meteorological and non-meteorological OGC Web Map services. The service-oriented design of Metview has been very beneficial in integrating these kinds of services.