Hi Soeren On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Soeren Gebbert <[email protected]> wrote: > 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
I agree that all these are very good reasons for having WPS support in QGIS. It makes sense in a lot of use cases. Still I do not think we should concentrate exclusively on WPS services for processing for several reasons: - the community creates lots of handy plugins, many of them are used for processing. It is not just SAGA, OTB, GRASS or OSSIM that could use the framework - we are speaking about many more possible modules that probably will never be implemented as WPS services. - WPS servers are IMHO not really widespread yet(?). Surely you can install your own on a local computer but I don't think that an average user is able to manage it with few clicks. And not everyone has access to a fast server in basement. - usability matters - a lot of work can be done by only editing few parameters and running the process, but there are plenty of cases where more interactivity is desired as mentioned also by Julien and Camilo: that could be a complex dependency between input parameters or a possibility for interactive picking of points from map canvas. The reasons above make me believe that we shouldn't depend exclusively on WPS. In my vision WPS should be simply another provider of processing modules next to SAGA, OTB or various other smaller plugins. WPS itself simply cannot deliver the rich user interface that we would like to provide. Regards Martin _______________________________________________ Qgis-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
