Apart from requesting map and data, GeoServer has another great feature: it can be used as a geoprocessing server. Geoprocessing lets the user perform operations on data, transform them, and also produce new datasets. The general concept is that the user creates a task by selecting the input data and operations to be performed on them.

Geoprocessing is a traditional concept in desktop GIS; in fact, this type of software is created to process spatial data. Later, geoprocessing was migrated to the server side; there are now several ways a user can ask a server to process a task on data. As with producing maps and delivering data, GeoServer implements geoprocessing referring to a standard, the WPS standard defined by OGC.

The OpenGIS® Web Processing Service (WPS) interface standard provides rules to standardize how inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services, such as polygon overlay. The WPS standard also defines how a client can request the execution of a process and how the output from the process is handled. WPS defines an interface that facilitates the publishing of geospatial processes and clients' discovery and binding to those processes. The data required by the WPS can be delivered across a network or they can be referenced to data already available on the server.