[Zoo-discuss] About ZOO Project

[Venkatesh Raghavan]

Hi all,

Quoting my off-the-list mail to Soeren Gebbert
before he joined this ML since it answers some
of the questions that the others may have too.

"We" in the answers below stands for the ZOO-Monkeys
(Gerald, Nick and myself)

Best

Venka


-------------------------------------------------------------
Soeren Gebbert wrote:
...
 > Is there more public information available about it?
 > The homepage does not describe the license model, or provide
 > a detailed description of the server and client model.

We are working on the project steering committee and the
license model. We are considering a dual license BSD type
license. Hope to release the code in April 2010. More details
available at http://trac.zoo-project.org. We could give you
track access if you are interested.
...
 > What exactly is the aim of this project?

Support WPS implementation in a multi-language programming
environment.

 > What is the benefit of this project over the existing WPS server
 > implementation in Python and Java?

ZOO support WPS implementation in any language that the developer
want to code his service.

 > What license is used for the open source and commercial version?

PSC will decide about license by March 2010. For the moment
we are thinking of dual license, BSD style.

 > What is the coding state of the project?

ZOO Kernel Version 0.1 is already available. You can
see it working via trac access. Version 0.1 will be
released under appropriate OSS license in early
april 2010.

 > What libraries are used for XML support?

libxml2 (www.xmlsoft.org)

 > Isn't it dangerous for a sever which should be high available to
 > implement all services as dynamic libraries (In case of segfaults in
 > the service libraries)? :)

In some sense it could be dangerous. We have to think about these
issues in due course.

 > Will the sources be available without sign in?

No sign in, just let us know if you need trac access.

 > Is the zoo WPS server WPS 1.0.0 compliant?

Yes

 > Does it support WSDL/SOAP?

Not currently.

 > What features additional to WPS will be supported (e-payment,
 > security, authorization ...)?

Could you explain in more detail what additional feature you
expect to be supported. ZOO platform will include
Mapserver for WMS, WFS, WCS, SOS support, Open Office Server
for Oasis support, apache for httpd and ZOO kernel for WPS.
In future ZOO kernel will support SAS and WFS-T.

 > Is the server scalable across several cluster nodes(like an servlet
 > tor EJB app server)?

Yes, it should be.

 > Will the WPS server include a BPEL engine?

No, we think it don't have to because it support
XML POST request which let us chain process easily.

 > ...
 > And many more :)
 >
 > I would love to see GRASS as backbone for open source or commercial 
WPS server.
 > We discuss in the grass community to implement a WPS description document
 > generator directly into GRASS. So any module within GRASS can create a
 > valid WPS
 > description document without modification.

That would be great! We hope GRASS will provide core geoprocessing 
service for the ZOO Kernel.

 > Therefor i am very interested in the zoo project.
 > I spend currently most of my spare time
 > to implement a library which connects GRASS with VTK, so GRASS library
 > function can be accessed from
 > C++, Python and Java within long running processes (like a WPS server)
 > and to benefit from the VTK image and vector processing (www.vtk.org).
 > http://code.google.com/p/vtk-grass-bridge/
 >
 > Maybe we can connect these efforts in the zoo project?

We surely hope so.

...
 >
 > Well, i would like to join, but i am afraid i have no time. :/
 > Maybe via Web IRC? We have a very restrictive proxy at work.

Hope you can participate by IRC. We will send you the date and
time in a few days.

Best regards

Venka