# Presentation: 262541

## Trends in Data Access

- Nancy Soreide
- NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

*Data Management Working Group Workshop ‘98, November 4-6, 1998*

## What is happening now?	

- We are collecting more data than ever
- Data is acquired and distributed in realtime
- Data is widely available on the Internet
- Data is increasingly diverse

## What are we doing about it?

- Web access is being provided by institutions collecting the data and by agency data centers
- data interfaces are general or specific to the data type
- Specialized access is customized for the dataset
- but the user faces a bewildering spectrum of data access interfaces and locations

## Customized data access

- Institutions are developing very sophisticated interfaces to their data
- Institutions are in touch with the constituents for their data
- The constituents for their data are more diverse than ever
- These customized interfaces are tailored for various constituents of the data

## Examples

- from NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory...
- Realtime El Nino/La Nina data http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/toga-tao/realtime.html
- Realtime Tsunami data http://corona.pmel.noaa.gov/~tsunami/realtime/
- Fisheries Oceanography data http://www.epic.noaa.gov/epic/select/foci_alaska_ctd.html

## Generalized data access

- Recent developments include methods for providing a centralized or unified data access
- Data is easily located and accessed
- The user sees a consistent search interface (geographic, time, keyword...)
- Better service to a wider audience
- Complements customized access methodologies, serves a different audience

## Example:  NOAAServer

- Integrates NOAA Data and Information Services on the Web
- Centralized search for NOAA wide data holdings:
- Search, view, download/order distributed NOAA data
- Uses http and conventional, legacy CGI scripts
- but different datasets have different navigation and interface characteristics
- 	On the NOAA Home Page, and http://www.esdim.noaa.gov/NOAAServer/

## Where are we headed?

- Institutions continue to provide specialized interfaces to their data
- Agencies develop single point, generalized access to diverse data types
- Agencies use networking technology to create single point, generalized access to geographically distributed data
- National programs press for single point, generalized access to data across institutions and agencies

## Example

- from NOAA:  Next Generation NOAAServer
- connects 5 geographically distributed data servers in Silver Spring, Boulder, Seattle
- CORBA for network connections
- unified interactive Java graphics
- data from distributed servers are co-plotted together on the same axis on the users desktop
- http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/~nns/noaaserver/nodc-coads-tao.html
- http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/~nns/noaaserver/coads-tao-raster.html
- http://merlin/dwd/talks/mts98/unified_browse/

## The future

- Agencies use networking technology to create single point, generalized access to geographically distributed data
- National research programs interested in single point, generalized access to data across institutions and agencies
- National and international interest in single point, generalized access...