JavaScript Client Libraries for the (Former) Long Tail of OGC Standards

Editor's Notes

1. What is the former long tail??
2. What is missing today are generic libraries that operate at the same level of performance and quality to (i) access observation and time series data, for example coming from OGC Sensor Observation Services (SOS) as part of the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of standards, and (ii) control processes published online, for examples as an OGC Web Processing Service (WPS). These standards are less widespread than WMS and WFS but gain momentum as data volumes increase, for example with a myriad of smart sensors in the internet of things or new EO satellite missions, and subsequent requirements for sophisticated architectures for (event-based) processing and management of time series data. SWE standards have just reached their second versions; a new WPS standard is currently under development.
3. During the talk we will demonstrate sample applications build with the libraries and share experiences of developing client libraries for XML-based standardized web services with Javascript, which include programming as well as project build and management lessons. SOS.js is a Javascript framework to access SOS data and build sophisticated lightweight browser applications for discovering and displaying time series data as plots, tables, and maps. It consists of two modules: core and user interface.
4. wps-js is a Javascript client library for the WPS generating forms based on the standardized metadata from the service and interactively creating and submitting processing tasks. It uses a templating mechanism for XML building and an internal Javascript class hierarchy. Both libraries are based on OL’s request and response encoding.
5. WPS-G (extension, based on WPS-T) (un)deployment of processes and data, process mgmt (monitor, control), download results
6. Wps-js is a simple form generation framework, limited styling etc. to allow easy integration into other websites
7. Process description for simple calculator
8. Data intercomparison clients pre-configuration Parameter passing through URL http://geoviqua.dev.52north.org/wps-js-client/demo/geca-intercomparison/client.html?source=Testlink&_pdPortlet_WAR_geoportal_uuid=067a17f9-8d37-4d15-b405-25e701dd03b0&_pdPortlet_WAR_geoportal_uuid=31172be3-01ae-4d4d-b500-8e734a1d5432
9. SOS.js is a Javascript framework to access SOS data and build sophisticated lightweight browser applications for discovering and displaying time series data as plots, tables, and maps. It consists of two modules: core and user interface.
10. Paul Breen, BAS
11. We conclude that Javascript is ready to handle raw (timeseries) data and it is used more than ever. Also, both the standards and their open source implementations are ready for operational deployments. So it is now time to spread them further by increasing the usability with good browser client applications based on small and flexible open source libraries.
12. Currently XML parsing facilities and request handling of OL are used (XML.js) One goal for both libraries is to become independent of OL and provide service access with a minimal footprint, for example to display data without maps. Might OL and Leaflet eventually use these libraries instead of their own client implementations for SOS and WPS? We see an advantage of developing such small and focussed libraries maintained by field experts in these non-mainstream domains. We’ll happily discuss if this is the best approach and pose the following question: Is there a (technical, organisational) way to build a compatible Javascript client frameworks across all geo-service standards?
13. While the presented libraries are developed withing the 52°North communities we want to use this talk to actively reach out to members of other open source projects to seek collaborators and to organise interoperability tests to make these tools useful for a broader community.