Download services

The Geoinformation Ordinance defines a download service as an Internet service that enables the downloading of copies of geospatial datasets or parts thereof and, where feasible, direct access to them.

A download service enables to download/access data that can be further processed and analysed with a GIS software.

Based on the granularity provided by at data level, download services can be categorized as:
Feature based: a «feature based» download service can provide access to a single object (e.g. a specific address or a specific building) of a dataset;
Dataset based: a «dataset based» download service provides access to an complete dataset or parts thereof.

Download services for geodata are usually made available via standard web services (e.g. the Web Feature Service by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)) and Application Programming Interfaces (e.g. the OGC API - Features).