McGuire, R. | Search NASA

NASA NTRS2010

Finding, Browsing and Getting Data Easily Using SPDF Web Services

The NASA GSFC Space Physics Data Facility (5PDF) provides heliophysics science-enabling information services for enhancing scientific research and enabling integration of these services into the Heliophysics Data Environment paradigm, via standards-based approach (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) web services in addition to web browser, FTP, and OPeNDAP interfaces. We describe these interfaces and the philosophies behind these web services, and show how to call them from various languages, such as IDL and Perl. We are working towards a "one simple line to call" philosophy extolled in the recent VxO discussions. Combining data from many instruments and missions enables broad research analysis and correlation and coordination with other experiments and missions.

Candey, R.↗

NASA NTRS2008

The Heliophysics Data Environment Today

Driven by the nature of the research questions now most critical to further progress in heliophysics science, data-driven research has evolved from a model once centered on individual instrument Principal investigator groups and a circle of immediate collaborators into a more inclusive and open environment where data gathered ay great public cost must then be findable and useable throughout the broad national and international research community. In this paper and as an introduction to this special session, we will draw a picture of existing and evolving resources throughout the heliophyscs community, the capabilities and data now available to end users, and the relationships and complementarity of different elements in the environment today. We will cite the relative roles of mission and instrument data centers and resident archives, multi-mission data centers, and the growing importance of virtual discipline observatories and cross-cutting services including the evolution of a common data dictionary. We will briefly summarize our view of the most important challenges still faced by users and providers, and our vision in ow the efforts today can evolve into a more and more enabling data framework for the global research community to tap the widest range of existing missions and their data to address a full range of critical science questions from the scale of microphysics to the heliospheric system as a whole.

Fung, Shing F.↗