Web Processing Service

1) Overview
2) Downloads
3) Official Schemas
4) Related News

1) Overview

This document specifies the interface to a Web Processing Service (WPS). WPS defines a standardized interface that facilitates the publishing of geospatial processes, and the discovery of and binding to those processes by clients. ―Processes‖ include any algorithm, calculation or model that operates on spatially referenced data. ―Publishing‖ means making available machine-readable binding information as well as human-readable metadata that allows service discovery and use.

A WPS can be configured to offer any sort of GIS functionality to clients across a network, including access to pre-programmed calculations and/or computation models that operate on spatially referenced data. A WPS may offer calculations as simple as subtracting one set of spatially referenced numbers from another (e.g., determining the difference in influenza cases between two different seasons), or as complicated as a global climate change model. The data required by the WPS can be delivered across a network, or available at the server.

This interface specification provides mechanisms to identify the spatially referenced data required by the calculation, initiate the calculation, and manage the output from the calculation so that the client can access it. This Web Processing Service is targeted at processing both vector and raster data.

The WPS specification is designed to allow a service provider to expose a web accessible process, such as polygon intersection, in a way that allows clients to input data and execute the process with no specialized knowledge of the underlying physical process interface or API. The WPS interface standardizes the way processes and their inputs/outputs are described, how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from a process is handled.

2) Downloads

Version	Document Title (click to download)	Document #	Type
1.0.0	Web Processing Service	05-007r7	IS
0.4	Web Processing Service	05-007r4	D-RFC
0.3.0	Web Processing Service	05-007r2	D-DP
0.2.1	Web Processing Service	05-007	D-DP
0.9.1	Discussions, findings, and use of WPS in OWS-4	06-182r1	DP