We needed a powerful tool that was easy to learn and integrate, and was somewhat forgiving. Such a tool would enable us to utilize the talents of existing team members as well as get them up to speed quickly while they learned to use the new tools and methodologies associated with OO programming. Fifth, the team wanted a package from a company that provided the highest quality training and support. Lastly, they wanted to build an application that could one day be easily migrated to the Internet. RDS is a distributed, PC-based networked environment integrating COTS tools and solutions.
Data sets vary in size from a few kilobytes to several hundred megabytes.
Advancements in COTS hardware and software technologies have enabled our data analysts to interactively process and visually analyze data samples collected from various Range instrumentation sensors and platforms on the desktop. The data analyst has a variety of functionality, such as folders, tabs, dialog boxes, windows, and buttons available that offer options to process and generate final data products. The application is extensible and provides the application developer with an integrated development environment. Routines common to the data reduction process, such as filters, transformations, and refraction correction, can be external to the IDL environment if it is required or is desirable. This feature enables the us to support organizational commonalty objectives by linking to a library of routines common to the data reduction environment.