A DODS server is equipped to respond to several different request types. Each request type is signified by a different URL suffix. The server itself is just a dispatch script, that determines the type of a request, and dispatches the request to the appropriate service program, and relays its result back to the client.
In figure A.2.1, a DODS client makes a GET request
to a DODS server (which is just an httpd daemon equipped with a
bunch of CGI programs). The daemon invokes the DODS Server, which is
a simple-minded dispatch script which in turn invokes the DAS, DDS,
Data, or other service program.
| Suffix | Service Program | Description |
.dds | *_dds | Returns the Data Descriptor Structure for the specified dataset. |
.das | *_das | Returns the Data Attribute Structure for the specified dataset. |
.dods | *_dods | Returns binary data in the form of a DODS data document. See Section A.1.3. |
.asc | asciival | Converts data requests to ASCII values before sending them back to the client. This service is useful for invoking from simple web browsers. |
.info | usage | Returns an HTML formatted version of the dataset DDS and DAS, and any other server and dataset information provided in *.ovr files. |
.html | none | Returns a URL constraint expression builder form, based on the dataset DDS and DAS. This is the DODS WWW interface. |
.ver | none | Returns the server version information. |