.. _faq:

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Frequently Asked Questions
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General Questions
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*What is "birdhouse"?*
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*Birdhouse* is collection of Python packages to make the usage of Web Processing Services (WPS) easy.
The available packages are used in the climate science community.

*What is "WPS"?*
----------------

The very short answer 
    WPS is the acronym for Web Processing Service.

The sligthly longer answer
    So, let's say you have a function (maybe written in Python) which might calculate the **"summer days in Finland since 1990"**. Then this function has probably input parameters (region, from-date, to-date, NetCDF files, ...) and an output (or even more ...) which might be just an integer number or a text document or even a nice diagram. Now, you would like to provide this function as a web service, so that other people can call it with just a simple URL like:: 

        http://myhost/wps/identifier=summer_days&region=finland&from=1990 

    ... ok ... then you should have a deeper look at this :term:`WPS` thing. 

Getting Help
============