The OGC Web Services Context Document (OWS Context) was created to allow a set of configured information resources (service set) to be passed between applications primarily as a collection of services.
OWS Context is developed to support in-line content as well. The goal is to support use cases such as the distribution of search results, the exchange of a set of resources such as OGC Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Map Service (WMS), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS), Web Coverage Service (WCS) and others in a ‘common operating picture’. Additionally OWS Context can deliver a set of configured processing services (Web Processing Service (WPS)) parameters to allow the processing to be reproduced on different nodes.
OWS Context is aimed at replacing previous OGC attempts at providing such a capability (the Web Map Context WMC) which was reasonably successful but limited to WMS. Other work on the ‘Location Organizer Folder (LOF)’ was also taken into consideration.