[Zoo-discuss] About FOSS4G 2009 and ZOO Project

[Soeren Gebbert]

Hello

2009/10/30 Venkatesh Raghavan <raghavan at media.osaka-cu.ac.jp>:
> Markus Neteler wrote:
> ...
>
>> I just thought about a way to facilitate the connection
>> in order to avoid "system()" calls and the like this aren't
>> very stable. A kind of wrapper will be needed and
>> a detailed analysis of how PyWPS is doing things is
>> important. Also 52N has a GRASS-WPS interface,
>> and Soeren is discussing this with one of the authors.
>
> Great that 52N has a GRASS-WPS interface now.

Well, the 52N-GRASS interface is still not available for the public. :/

> Many at FOSS4G-2009 asked why do we not choose to
> use 52N or how was ZOO different from PyWPS.
>
> My understanding is that 52N does it stuff using
> Java and PyWPS does its in Python.
>
> Firsty, the possibility of writing code in pure C or C++, PHP,
> python, Java, Fortran and in fact any compiler (or Runtime
> environment, if I am not mistaken, Gerald) and running it
> as WPS is what makes ZOO powerful.

AFAIK this can be done with the other WPS implementations too,
in case the algorithms are available as stand alone programs (like
grass modules or
the gdal programs).

>
> I think that multi-language support is important, especially
> after hearing Andy Pitman's talk in Sydney and learning
> that in the Climate Change research, Fortran still rules.
> CC folks who study change are simple not going to change
> the programming language and they need not do so even for
> a billion dollar funding.

Thats absolutely true. The FEM folks at my work still uses Fortran to implement
FEM solver. And these programs can not be linked as libraries into
other programs. :(

Best regards
Soeren