An overview of WCS support in ArcGIS

Web Coverage Service (WCS) is an Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), Web service standard for exchanging continuous raster data (in other words, a coverage). This is for exchanging information such as the pixel values in an aerial photograph or elevation values in a DEM.

ArcGIS supports both the publishing of raster data as WCS services (using ArcGIS Server) as well as the use of WCS data within ArcGIS Desktop.

• To understand how to access WCS data using ArcGIS Desktop (ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo), see Adding a WCS service layer to ArcMap.
• To understand more about serving WCS using ArcGIS Server, see Serving raster data as WCS.