.. _kernel-introduction: Introduction ============ :Authors: Nicolas Bozon, GĂ©rald Fenoy, Jeff McKenna :Last Updated: $Date: 2011-12-07 13:19:47 +0000 (Wed, 07 Dec 2011) $ ZOO Kernel is the heart of the ZOO. It is a powerful server-side C Kernel which makes it possible to manage and chain Web services, by loading dynamic libraries and handling them as on-demand Web services. The ZOO Kernel is written in the C language, but supports several common programming languages in order to connect to numerous libraries and models. Using ZOO Kernel as a Web Processing Platform --------------------------------------------- ZOO Kernel works with Apache and can communicate with cartographic engines and Web mapping clients. It simply adds the WPS support to your spatial data infrastructure and your Web mapping application! .. note:: If you'd like some background on the WPS standard, head to: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps Supported Languages ------------------- ZOO Kernel supports the following programming languages, and let's you use them to create new ZOO Services from new or existing code: ============ =================== ========================= ============ **Language** **ServiceProvider** **DataStructure** **Return** ------------ ------------------- ------------------------- ------------ C / C++ Shared Library maps* M integer Fortran Shared Library CHARACTER*(1024) M(10,30) integer Java Class File `HashMap`_ integer Python Module File `dictionary`_ integer PHP Script File `Array`_ integer Perl Script File integer JavaScript Script file `Object`_ or Array Array/Object ============ =================== ========================= ============ .. _`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/ ZOO Kernel is a WPS Espresso Machine ------------------------------------ .. image:: ../_static/images/zoo_kernel_scheme.png