View Server

View Server is an open-source (MIT-licensed) software stack from EOX IT Services for organisations that hold Earth observation archives and need to make them searchable, viewable and downloadable for their users. It continues EOX's EOxServer and Browse Server work and adds cloud-native configuration and deployment.

The stack runs as Docker containers on Kubernetes (Helm chart) or Docker Swarm. A harvester collects product metadata from STAC catalogues and APIs, OpenSearch, OADS or file storage; a preprocessor converts imagery, for example to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF; a registrar loads products into a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database; and an EOxServer-based renderer with MapCache tile caching serves them through OpenSearch (search), WMS and WMTS (viewing) and WCS and DSEO (download). Renderings such as true colour, false colour and NDVI are defined per collection as band expressions and generated on the fly from multispectral data, with pansharpening and CQL metadata filtering. Data can be read from S3, OpenStack Swift, HTTP or local storage, and a bundled web client lets users browse, filter, inspect and download products in 2D or 3D.

EOX states that View Server is used in operational deployments for ESA's Payload Data Ground Segment and the Copernicus Space Component Data Access system (CSCDA), covering optical and SAR missions, and in ESA's Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Common Architecture (EOEPCA). EOX also uses it to serve Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data in its agricultural area monitoring work.