Introduction

What is ZOO ?

ZOO-Project is an open source processing server implementation released under a MIT/X-11 style license. It provides an OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) compliant developer-friendly framework to create and chain WPS Web services. ZOO-Project provide support for both 1.0.0 and 2.0.0 versions of the WPS specifications. The ZOO-Project also support OGC API - Processes - Part 1: Core since version 1.9.0.

ZOO-Project is made of four parts:

  • ZOO-Kernel : A server-side C Kernel which makes it possible to manage and chain Web services implemented in different programming languages.

  • ZOO-Services : A growing suite of example Web Services based on various open source libraries.

  • ZOO-API : A server-side JavaScript API able to call and chain the ZOO Services, which makes the development and chaining processes easier and faster.

  • ZOO-Client : a JavaScript library for interacting with WPS Services from web applications.

ZOO-Project was designed to make the service creation and deployment easy, by providing a powerful system able to understand and execute WPS compliant queries. It supports ten programming languages, thus allowing you to create Web Services using the one you prefer. It also lets you use an existing code and to turn it as a WPS Service. The current supported programming languages are the following:

  • C/C++

  • Python

  • Perl

  • Java

  • Fortran

  • PHP

  • JavaScript trhough libmozjs / Node.Js

  • Ruby

  • C#

  • R

The ZOO-Kernel is also able to automatically load and execute application from GIS engine such as OrfeoToolBox and SAGA.

More information on the project is available on the ZOO-Project official website .

How does ZOO works ?

ZOO-Project is based on a C Kernel which is the core system (aka ZOO-Kernel). The latter is able to dynamically load libraries and to handle them as on-demand Web services.

A ZOO-Service is a couple made of a ZOO metadata file (.zcfg) and the code for the corresponding implementation. The metadata file describes the function that can be called using a WPS Execute Request, as well as the supported input/output formats. Service contains the algorithms and functions, and can be implemented using any of the supported languages.

ZOO-Kernel works as CGI through Apache and can communicate with cartographic engines and Web mapping clients. It simply adds the WPS support to your spatial data infrastructure and your webmapping applications. It can use every GDAL/OGR supported formats as input data and create suitable vector or raster output for your cartographic engine and/or your web-mapping client application.

What are we going to do in this workshop?

You will learn how to use ZOO-Kernel and how to create ZOO-Services from the ZOO-Project Official Docker Compose environment. Configuration file and basic ways to use ZOO-Kernel and ZOO-Service will be presented. Then, you will be invited to program your first simple service using the Python language. Some ZOO-Services will be presented and individually tested inside a ready-to-use OpenLayers application. Finally, this services will be chained using the server-side Javascript ZOO-API.

The whole workshop is organized step-by-step and numerous code snippets are available. The instructors will check the ZOO-Kernel is functioning on each machine and will assist you while coding. Technical questions are of course welcome during the workshop.

Usefull tips for reading

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Let’s go !