[Qgis-developer] QGIS Processing Framework

[Soeren Gebbert]

Dear qgis developer,
here are my two cent from the point of view of a GRASS GIS, VTK and
wps-grass-bridge developer :

IMHO most of these features which are discussed here are covered by
the Web Processing Service
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps.

WPS is an OGC standard for a generic interface description to run
processes from different software packages/libraries as web service.

The following GIS software/libraries are already available as web
processing services:

ArcGIS via 52North WPS
SEXTANTE  via 52North WPS
GRASS GIS via 52North WPS, PyWPS and ZOO WPS using the wps-grass-bridge

A lot of work has been done to integrate these GIS packages as web
processing service back-ends, so you can use them out of the box and
avoid redundant implementations of the same idea.

The support of the OGC WPS standard in QGIS will allow you to:
- use open standards for interface descriptions
- Integrate the existing WPS server and there processes (~400?) as
algorithms into QGIS
- chain/orchestrate WPS processes from different back-ends
- directly integrate WFS and WCS sources as inputs without the need of
local storage
- Working with QGIS on a silent and long running computer in the
office while the processing is done on a heavy and fast server in the
basement

A special feature: The processing can be done in the cloud using QGIS
as a client: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2pb_Xjq8Y

QGIS will be completely independent from minor or major changes in the
WPS back-ends (new GRASS GIS or SEXTANE versions, ... ) which is IMHO
a huge advantage.

I would suggest to implement an outstanding WPS client for QGIS and to
help others to integrate more GIS software and libraries as back-ends
in existing open source WPS server.

Horst Düster and i have implemented a nice prototype which can be seen
in action here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCnax9w1bCs&feature=related

Best regards
Soeren