.. _wcs_basics:

WCS basics
==========

GeoServer provides support for Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Service (WCS) versions 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0.  One can think of WCS as the equivalent of :ref:`wfs`, but for raster data instead of vector data.  It lets you get at the raw coverage information, not just the image.  GeoServer is the reference implementation for WCS 1.1.