A Web Map Service generates map data and serves it over the Internet to a client application. The WMS standard was created by the Open Geospatial Consortium and is fast becoming a preferred way to serve geospatial data to a wide variety of clients. As cloud computing becomes more popular, WMS servers can leverage the cloud's scalability and redundancy to provide a high-performance channel for serving map data.

Creating your own WMS with Map Suite WMS Server Edition can prove beneficial in many ways. It allows you to separate your client application from your map service, yielding higher performance map rendering and more secure map data. You can also load balance any number of map-generating WMS servers to increase performance exponentially. And because map rendering is usually much more resource-intensive than the other processes of a web-based application, you won't slow down your entire app by processing maps on the same server.

Even desktop applications can consume map data from your WMS, meaning you can distribute desktop software with a smaller footprint and keep your GIS databases in the cloud.

ThinkGeo is using Map Suite WMS Server Edition in production today to power http://maps.thinkgeo.com, a web-based mapping and geocoding service. All of our Map Suite sample applications — including web-based and Windows desktop samples — pull map data from the cloud via Map Suite WMS Server Edition, and our Map Suite GIS developer components' WorldMapKitLayer is also powered by WMS Server Edition.

Tile caching, implemented by Map Suite WMS Server and supported by our entire Map Suite GIS software line, is a great way to vastly improve the performance of your WMS server. By storing local copies of pre-rendered map tiles on the server, you remove the need for the server to re-generate the tiles for every map extent requested by a client. Map Suite WMS Server Edition's robust tile caching system supports pre-rendered tiles at multiple zoom levels that you define in advance, plus multiple caches for displaying map data in different ways. You can even use the tile cache if a client application requests a map image that is outside the pre-rendered scales, and Map Suite WMS Server Edition will simply shrink or enlarge the tiles to fit the exact scale requested. Similar tile caching technology is employed by services like Google Maps™ for maximum throughput in high-traffic situations.

Map Suite WMS Server Edition is built upon the rock-solid foundation of Map Suite Services Edition, our core GIS product, and includes all of the capabilities thereof — including professional rendering, geometric functions, support for a wide variety of data formats, SQL querying, and so much more. Like all of our Map Suite products, WMS Server Edition is designed natively for Microsoft .NET and uses Microsoft's Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) for easy customization through plugins.

It couldn't be easier. Map Suite WMS Server Edition uses Microsoft IIS for easy deployment, meaning that your WMS server runs like any other website under IIS. Some other WMS server solutions on the market today require that you install and run a Windows service, but Map Suite WMS Server Edition is a simple .NET web application. It also supports SSL security via HTTPS connections, and can process optional parameters specified in the URI querystring, making Map Suite WMS Server Edition as versatile to use as it is simple to deploy.

Yes. Map Suite WMS Server Edition is designed to be easily scaled, and supports load balancing for high availability. A farm of load-balanced WMS servers can be deployed separately from the server(s) that host your web-based applications themselves, decoupling your map generation from your actual apps and giving you scalability and redundancy where you need it most.

Yes. In fact, we designed the product with this in mind. Map Suite WMS Server Edition supports Microsoft's Managed Extensibility Framework, or MEF, making it easy to extend your WMS server through the use of plugins. You can use the MEF system to write your own map data plugins, add features like advanced logging or implement your own custom security model. When you're finished, simply drop new plugins into the proper directory and they're automatically recognized by your WMS server. MEF ensures that the servers you build with Map Suite WMS Server Edition are ready to be enhanced and expanded as your business needs change and evolve, without a lot of redevelopment time.

Map Suite WMS Server Edition is available in three editions:

1. The Free Evaluation Edition, which lets you work with all the features of WMS Server Edition free for 60 days
2. The Development-Only Edition, which comes with one full license to let you develop your WMS server with Visual Studio, and one year of free updates
3. The Server & Development Package, which comes with everything in the Developer Edition, plus one production web server license

Each physical WMS server you wish to run in a production environment requires its own production web server license. These licenses can be purchased separately, giving you room to grow over time.

When you purchase (or download an evaluation of) Map Suite WMS Server Edition, you'll receive:

• The WMS Server Edition software itself
• Complete API documentation in Windows Help format
• A sample WMS Server solution for Visual Studio, which creates an administration web page that lets you test and preview your WMS plugins
• Sample applications for a Web Edition and Desktop Edition client with full C# source code
• Links to online resources, including a QuickStart Guide to help you get started fast

ThinkGeo is using Map Suite WMS Server Edition in production today to power http://maps.thinkgeo.com, a web-based mapping and geocoding service. All of our Map Suite sample applications — including web-based and Windows desktop samples — pull map data from the cloud via Map Suite WMS Server Edition, and our Map Suite GIS developer components' WorldMapKitLayer is also powered by WMS Server Edition.

The best way to learn how to start using Map Suite WMS Server Edition is to check out our illustrated QuickStart Guide, which will walk you through the process of creating your first WMS server. With the product itself, we've also included some handy debugging tools, utilities, sample projects and plugins to help guide your development. Plus, when you run your project in Visual Studio, we've included a built-in web client to show you how its maps will look.