source: branches/PublicaMundi_David-devel/docs/kernel/what.rst @ 697

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What is ZOO-Kernel ?
====================

ZOO-Kernel is the heart of the `ZOO-Project <http://zoo-project.org>`_ WPS platform. It is a WPS compliant implementation written in C language which provides a powerful and extensible WPS server. 

ZOO-Kernel is an extensible WPS server that makes your system more powerful. It provides a full-featured processing engine which runs on Linux, Mac OSX |trade| and Windows |trade| operating
systems. ZOO-Kernel is a CGI program which works on common web servers (namely `Apache <http://httpd.apache.org/>`_ or `IIS <http://www.iis.net/>`_ |trade|). It can be seamlessly integrated to new or existing web platforms.

ZOO-Kernel lets you process geospatial or non geospatial data using well formed WPS requests. The WPS server is able to manage and chain WPS Services (see ZOO-Services for examples) by loading dynamic libraries and source code written in different programming languages.  

First class WPS server
-----------------------

Compliant
........................................................

ZOO-Kernel implements and complies with the `WPS 1.0.0 <http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps/>`_ and the `WPS 2.0.0 <http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps/>`_ standards edited by the `Open Geospatial Consortium <http://www.opengeospatial.org/>`_. It is able to perform the WPS operations as indicated in the OpenGIS |reg| specification, as listed bellow:

* **GetCapablities**: Returns service-level metadata information.It provides the list of available processing services.
* **DescribeProcess**: Returns a description of a process, including its supported input and output.
* **Execute**:  Launches computation and returns the output produced by a particular process.

ZOO-Kernel compliancy and performances can be tested using the
following tools:
 * `cptesting <https://github.com/WPS-Benchmarking/cptesting>`_ 
 * WPS Test Suite provided by the `OGC compliancy program <http://cite.opengeospatial.org/>`_
 * XML responses validity can also be simply tested using `XMLint <http://xmlsoft.org/xmllint.html/>`_.

Polyglot
........................................................

ZOO-Kernel is a **polyglot**. The software is written in a valid form
of multiple programming languages, which performs the same operations
independent of the programming language used to compile or interpret
it. The supported programming languages are listed bellow:

============ =================== ========================= ============
**Language** **ServiceProvider** **DataStructure**         **Return**
------------ ------------------- ------------------------- ------------
C / C++      Shared Library      maps* M                   integer
Java         Class File          `HashMap`_                integer
Python       Module File         `Dictionary`_             integer
PHP          Script File         `Array`_                  integer
Perl         Script File                                   integer
Ruby         Script File         `Hash`_                   integer
Fortran      Shared Library      CHARACTER*(1024) M(10,30) integer
JavaScript   Script file         `Object`_ or Array        Object/Array
============ =================== ========================= ============

.. _`HashMap`: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/HashMap.html
.. _`dictionary`: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries
.. _`Array`: http://php.net/manual/language.types.array.php
.. _`Object`: http://www.json.org/
.. _`Hash`: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Hash.html


Scalable
........................................................

ZOO-Kernel can **scale** to large infrastructures involving high
numbers of (concurrent) WPS requests and/or huge amounts of
input/output.