HR: 14:10h
AN: SF43B-03    [Abstracts]
TI: An overview of the Live Access Server
AU: * Hankin, S
EM: steven.c.hankin@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA/PMEL, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 United States
AU: Callahan, J
EM: Jonathan.S.Callahan@noaa.gov
AF: JISAO, University of WA, Seattle, WA 98115 United States
AU: Schweitzer, R
EM: Roland.Schweitzer@noaa.gov
AF: contractor, 2802 Cimarron Ct. , College Station, TX 77845 United States
AU: O'Brien, K
EM: Kevin.M.O'Brien@noaa.gov
AF: JISAO, University of WA, Seattle, WA 98115 United States
AU: Mclean, J
EM: Joe.Mclean@noaa.gov
AF: JISAO, University of WA, Seattle, WA 98115 United States
AU: Wei, Y
EM: Yonghua.Wei@noaa.gov
AF: MacroStaff, Inc, Gateway 405 Building, Bellevue, WA 98005 United States
AU: Manke, A
EM: Ansley.B.Manke@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA/PMEL, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 United States
AB: In recent years, the Live Access Server (LAS) has gained recognition as a significant component in the design of data portals to provide access to gridded and non-gridded ocean, climate and atmosphere data. LAS is "freeware" available from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (http://www.ferret.noaa.gov). It is a named component of the plan for Data Management and Communications (DMAC) within the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). LAS has been installed at well over 50 institutions worldwide and provides visualization, browsing, and subsetting services for many Terabytes of data from a broad range of environmental fields. LAS is a configurable scientific data "product" server - providing a friendly user interface to ocean/atmosphere/climate 4-dimensional visualization, download, and comparison of data on the Web. The user may compare variables from distributed sites, either through visual inspection - graphical overlays and side-by-side plots - or by numerically differencing them (with automated regridding). LAS does not generate products, itself. Rather it functions as a broker that directs requests for specific types of products to various "back end" applications to perform the work. Back end applications may include commercial off the shelf software such as IDLr, standardized product request protocols such as the Open GIS Web Mapping Services, scientific applications such as Ferret and GrADS, and UNIX utilities such as the netCDF operators (NCO). The "intelligence" of an LAS site lies entirely in its XML configuration files and associated resources. These files define not only the operations that are possible, but also the data sets, variables, units, space-time domains, etc. -- in short, the information necessary to present the user an interface to the data. By sharing copies of their XML configuration files and associated resources with a consolidated site, a group of LAS sites can be configured as a collaborating "sister server" cluster. The consolidated sisters' (virtual) site provides access to the collective holdings, making it possible for distributed groups of researchers to pool their data holdings, while still retaining independent control. This mode of operation is particularly well suited to model intercomparison projects.
UR: http://www.ferret.noaa.govFerret/LAS/
DE: 4200 OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL
DE: 4500 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL
DE: 4800 OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL
DE: 3300 METEOROLOGY AND ATMOSPHERIC DYNAMICS
DE: 0910 Data processing
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting