Integrating OGC API processes into Galaxy

In the geosciences, the services provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC API services) are based on widely-accepted standards and popular concepts to work with and analyse spatial-temporal data on the web. The goal of this talk is to give an overview of ongoing developments, challenges, approaches, and open questions regarding the integration of OGC API services in Galaxy. From the family of OGC API services, I will focus on OGC API Features and Processes. OGC API Features offer functionalities to request (spatial-temporal) data, modify it, and create new data via an API endpoint. Because Galaxy is a platform with a strong focus on data, it is interesting to explore how such standard-conformant spatial-temporal data can be integrated into Galaxy. OGC API Processes take some input, such as a JSON file including observations from a certain study area, process the data, for example, by applying a statistic to the data, and output the result, which can be another dataset or a figure. Since OGC API Processes and many of the tools provided by Galaxy have the same logic (input, processing, output), the integration of standardised processes in Galaxy can make it possible to benefit from both approaches and reach a broader audience. Both OGC API Features and Processes can then be used as components in workflows built on Galaxy. This integration is one of the core contributions to the Open Science Persistent Demonstrator project organised by OGC (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7b3c4d13ec2a4407ae55f358f6599b25). During the project, a number of requirements were identified regarding the integration of OGC API services and Galaxy: ● The services should still run the already existing infrastructure ● Data transfer from and to Galaxy should be avoided, particularly in the case of large data ● Galaxy’s user interface should be used to configure the input parameters for a process ● Users should be able to connect the processes on Galaxy to create workflows After describing how the concepts underlying the integration of OGC API Features and Processes in Galaxy meet the requirements, I will also show existing implementations. In addition, I will report on challenges, such as the vast number of existing servers providing OGC API Processes and ways to mitigate them, for example, by implementing a generic OGC API Process wrapper.