[wfs-dev] what to return when GetFeature returns nothing

[Jeff Fitzgerald]

Hey Guys:

    Here's the scenario. . . You submit a GetFeature request to a WFS using
a BBox filter. There are no features that are contained within or intersect
the BBox. What do you return? I have a feeling, from similar discussions,
that this does not warrant a service exception report. Instead, it should
probably return an empty GML document. So, I guess my question really is,
what does an empty response to a GetFeature request look like?

    Obviously, there would be no featureMembers, since the collection is
empty. Am I correct in assuming that the boundedBy coordinates would all be
0?

    Thanks in advance.

Fitz

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<featureCollection xmlns:myns="http://www.somewhere.com/myns"
xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <gml:boundedby>
    <gml:Box gml:srsName="EPSG:32100">
      <gml:coordinates decimal="." cs="," ts=" ">0,0 0,0</gml:coordinates>
    </gml:Box>
  </gml:boundedby>
</featureCollection>

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Jeff Fitzgerald
Technical Consultant, CARIS Spatial Fusion
jeff.fitzgerald@caris.com
CARIS Spatial Components Division
(506) 458-8533
http://www.spatialcomponents.com
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