Glossary of Terms

Unsure what a workspace, store, or GetCapabilities request means? This glossary explains key GeoServer concepts to help you navigate the platform confidently.

Term	Description
📁 Workspace	A container in GeoServer used to group related stores and layers, often named for a specific project or data theme.
🗄️ Store	Defines how GeoServer connects to your data source (e.g., shapefiles, PostGIS, GeoTIFF). Each store belongs to a workspace.
🗺️ Layer	A published dataset in GeoServer, made available through OGC services like WMS, WFS, or WCS.
📚 Layer Group	A collection of layers combined into a single map view with a specified drawing order and shared styles.
🎨 Style	An SLD or CSS document that defines how data is visually rendered—colors, symbols, line thickness, and opacity.
🌐 SRS / CRS	Spatial Reference System (or Coordinate Reference System) that defines how coordinates map to real-world locations (e.g., EPSG:4326).
🖼️ Web Map Service (WMS)	An OGC service that delivers map images of spatial data on demand.
📂 Web Feature Service (WFS)	An OGC service that returns vector data in formats like GeoJSON, GML, or Shapefile.
🖨️ Web Coverage Service (WCS)	An OGC service for retrieving raster data as coverages for further analysis.
📝 GetCapabilities	A request returning an XML document describing a service’s available layers, operations, and parameters.
🗺️ GetMap	A WMS request that returns a map image based on specified layers, bounding box, style, and output format.
🔄 Reprojection	The process of transforming spatial data from one coordinate reference system to another.
⚙️ GeoWebCache	A tile caching server integrated with GeoServer that speeds up map delivery by serving pre-rendered tiles.
📦 Feature Type	A schema definition for vector data in GeoServer, describing geometry type and attribute structure.
🗜️ Coverage	A term used for raster data in GeoServer, representing continuous data such as satellite imagery or elevation models.