Public comment sought on new work items for OGC API - Processes Standards Working Group

The OGC API - Processes SWG is the group within the OGC membership responsible for the development and maintenance of the OGC API - Processes core standard and its extensions, as well as for maintaining the WPS standard.

OGC API - Processes provides organizations the opportunity to make available on the web geospatial software libraries and utilities that, up until now, had only been available as standalone desktop products. It forms a crucial part of OGC’s “user-to-the-data” architecture that allows users to not only mine intelligence from their cloud-based data through streamlined analysis, but also to create value-added products for others to use.

OGC API - Processes, like its predecessor (WPS), achieves this by providing a standardized mechanism for computational geospatial processes to be deployed and offered as services within Cloud Computing environments.

With the initial development of the OGC API - Processes standard now complete, the OGC API - Processes SWG will begin to address extensions that will simplify the deployment and execution of geospatial processing packages and chained processing workflows.

Specifically, the SWG will begin work on the following extensions to Part 1 Core (final names TBA):

Part 2: Transactions for deployment

This extension will enable the dynamic deployment and execution of processes as application packages. An application package is a file that provides a description of a process(es) to be deployed, including the inputs and outputs of the process(es) as well as other ancillary metadata (e.g. reference to a containerized execution unit) necessary for the process to be deployed. An application package can take many forms (e.g. Jupyter notebook, workflow execution document, etc.) and so this extension will not mandate any specific form but will instead include one or more optional conformance classes for application package formats that have been developed via OGC Innovation Program Initiatives (e.g. CWL, MOAW, OGC Application Package, etc.).

Part 3: Workflows and Chaining

This extension will provide the ability to:

• chain nested processes,

• refer to external processes and collections accessible via OGC API standards, and

• trigger execution of processes through OGC API data delivery specifications (such as OGC API - Features, Tiles, Maps and Coverages).

The SWG will look at different solutions for workflows and chaining to ensure validation of the defined architecture across multiple approaches.