HR: 1330h
AN: SH42A-0503    [PDF]
TI: Data Integration in the Virtual Solar Observatory
AU: * Bogart, R S
EM: RBogart@spd.aas.org
AF: Stanford University, Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, Stanford, CA 94305-4085
AU: Davey, A
EM: ard@physics.montana.edu
AF: Montana State University, PO Box 173840, Bozeman, MT 59717-3840
AU: Dimitoglou, G
EM: george@esa.nascom.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics Branch, Greenbelt, MD 20771
AU: Gurman, J B
EM: gurman@gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics Branch, Greenbelt, MD 20771
AU: Hill, F
EM: fhill@noao.edu
AF: National Solar Observatory, PO Box 26732, Tucson, AZ 85726-6732
AU: Martens, P C
EM: martens@physics.montana.edu
AF: Montana State University, PO Box 173840, Bozeman, MT 59717-3840
AU: Tian, K Q
EM: ktian@stanford.edu
AF: Stanford University, Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, Stanford, CA 94305-4085
AU: Wampler, S
EM: swampler@noao.edu
AF: National Solar Observatory, PO Box 26732, Tucson, AZ 85726-6732
AB: The aim of the Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) is the integration of diverse data archives relevant to the study of Solar Physics into a virtual collection providing common search and delivery services. The back-end query services are implemented as Web Services and accessible via the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP defines a remote procedure call mechanism that employs HTTP as its transport and encodes the client-server interactions in XML documents. In addition to its core function in identifying relevant datasets locally, a SOAP server at each data provider acts as a wrapper that maps descriptions in an abstract data model to those in the provider's specific model, and vice versa. Heterogeneous data search services can thereby be integrated with a common interface. This allows scientists to access multiple archives with differing data organizations at once, enhancing their ability to discover and and analyze correlative data from multiple sources. We have chosen two SOAP implementations for the VSO: SOAP::Lite and OpenSOAP. The former, written in Perl, is suitable for fast and flexible prototyping in data search applications. SOAP::Lite servers have been set up at each of the VSO archives, and can be readily installed at other servers. OpenSOAP, written in C with built-in support for service description and dispatch, may prove useful in transforming current computing utilities into Web Services. We report on initial experiments using OpenSOAP to provide additional services to the basic query functionality of VSO.
UR: http://vso.stanford.edu/papers/agu03.html
DE: 7599 General or miscellaneous
SC: SPA - Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting