[OpenLayers-Users] open WMS for Germany (or using GMap's Satellite data?)

[John R. Frank]

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Jens Nachtigall wrote:
> getting too deep into the GMap trap). The problem is where I could get a
> WMS for Germany/Switzerland/Austria from, since as far as I know there
> is no good public geographical data available for these countries.

Jens, the Google Maps layers are pretty robust in version 2.0 of
OpenLayers.

If you're looking specifically for free data, then you might need to lobby
Bundesrepublik Deutschland, maybe through http://www.bgr.bund.de, and
similar organizations in neighboring countries.

If you're building a business on this data, you might want a commercial
service provider with good maps.  We've begun to add layers based on
providers who offer or intend to offer real "service level agreements" for
commercial use:

	http://openlayers.org/gallery/multiple.html

Several of these additions are still in alpha and beta, so please help
test and repair them.  Many of the issues relate to problems inside the
service providers APIs, so dialoging with them directly is necessary.

map24 has good maps for your countries of interest.  Currently, their API
is woefully incomplete: lacks a pixel-->coords method.  Perhaps you'd like
to pursue a dialog with them so it can be used in OpenLayers?

As described in the

	http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/BusinessCase

OpenLayers intends to support map services that use API keys to offer
non-free data sources.  Obviously, we love free data sources.

John