[Qgis-developer] analytical workflow

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Paolo

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Hi all.
> One of the great thing we plan to develop for the new Processing framework it to make
> easy for user to pipe one command into another, so to build complex workflows of
> analysis.
> One idea: add a + button on the single module window to add further modules in a
> chain, taking the output of the first command and giving it as an input to the next
> one; moreover we could have a Save button to store the command sequence in a file.
> Of course one could think of more complex extensions, adding support for cycles,
> recursivity etc., but this seems a simple approach to start with.
> Comments or ideas?

I am not sure if it makes sense to spend time on a solution like this
because the number of use cases is quite limited. Surely one could
create simple linear chains of modules, but creating anything more
complex would be quite inconvenient (e.g. a process where module C
uses output of modules A and B). I believe that a graphical model
builder (where a box = module, an arrow = data transfer) is the only
long term solution, something like this:
http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/WxGUI_Modeler

Martin