WPS Openlayer Client Introduction

"OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is a pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a (still-developing) JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth APIs, with one important difference -- OpenLayers is Free Software, developed for and by the Open Source software community.

OpenLayers is a project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

Furthermore, OpenLayers implements industry-standard methods for geographic data access, such as the OpenGIS Consortium's Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) protocols. Under the hood, OpenLayers is written in object-oriented JavaScript, using components from Prototype.js and the Rico library. The OpenLayers code base already has hundreds of unit tests, via the Test.AnotherWay framework.

As a framework, OpenLayers is intended to separate map tools from map data so that all the tools can operate on all the data sources. This separation breaks the proprietary silos that earlier GIS revolutions have taught civilization to avoid. The mapping revolution on the public Web should benefit from the experience of history." (taken from the OpenLayers website)

Based on this description and the need to process distributed services on the Web we decided to develop a plug-in for OpenLayers. The facilities of OpenLayers allowed us to develop enhanced distributed web service based processing of geodata.

To get a short idea of the integration of WPS and other services in udig using the developed plugin please take a look the following demo.