Using WPS to perform spatial analysis
Now that we have configured our GeoServer instances to work as a spatial analysis platform, we can start putting it to work. There are a number of different ways in which we can approach this, all made possible by the OGC standards implemented. Since we are just dealing with a web service, almost any application can be used to send WPS requests and receive responses. Some of the approaches we can take are:
Build a web mapping client using OpenLayers
Connect to the WPS service using Desktop GIS such as QGIS
Execute from the command line using cURL
Regardless of the approach that you want to take, they all have one thing in common: they communicate with the WPS service over HTTP POST using XML. To really learn and understand what is happening, we should interact with the XML directly. Fortunately, GeoServer provides us with a WPS request builder application that we can use to interactively build up WPS requests in XML. The request builder was installed as...
