SAGA – System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses- is a hybrid GIS software. The first objective of SAGA is to give (geo-)scientists an effective but easy learnable platform for the implementation of geoscientific methods, which is achieved by SAGA’s unique Application Programming Interface (API). The second is to make these methods accessible in a user friendly way. This is mainly done by the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Together this results in SAGA’s true strength: a fast growing set of geoscientifc methods, bundled in exchangeable Module Libraries.The figure shows SAGA’s system architecture.
SAGA is written in the widespread and powerful C++ programming language and follows an object oriented approach. Moreover it relies on the GNU Public License, which means it is an open source project. All this designates SAGA to be a first choice tool for everybody who works in the field of geosciences, in particular for those who want transparent state of the art methods.