Sharing Climate Data over the Internet

Try out these operational servers (or look at the complete list)

• NVODS (National Virtual Oceanographic Data System)
• PFEL (Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory)
• My Nasa Data (NASA data for educators)
• AVISO (Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data)

The Live Access Server (LAS) is a highly configurable Web server designed to provide flexible access to geo-referenced scientific data. It can present distributed data sets as a unified virtual data base through the use of DODS networking. Ferret is the default visualization application used by LAS, though other applications (Matlab, IDL, GrADS, ...) can also be used.

LAS enables the Web user to

• visualize data with on-the-fly graphics
• request custom subsets of variables in a choice of file formats
• access background reference material about the data (metadata)
• compare (difference) variables from distributed locations

LAS enables the data provider to

• unify access to multiple types of data in a single interface
• create thematic data servers from distributed data sources
• offer derived products on the fly
• remedy metadata inadequacies (poorly self-describing data)
• offer unique products (e.g. visualization styles specialized for the data)

Here are a couple of reports about LAS topics

• LAS Overview. January 2001.
• LAS for In Situ data, a PDF file. January 2002.

Who is using LAS?

Table of LAS sites worldwide.

 

How do I obtain LAS?

See the Downloads section.

Where do I get help using LAS?

Help is available through a users email list, the email list archives, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Who should use LAS?

LAS is a resource for anyone who needs to share oceanographic or atmospheric data with others. It is especially well-suited to groups of data producers with related data sets at distributed locations: a community modeling effort for example.

Can I configure LAS to meet special needs?

LAS is configurable with respect to the structure of data sets; the style of output graphics; the appearance of the interface; the level of user access provided (who can request what); and security (who can access the server).

What systems does LAS run on?

The server portion of LAS is written in perl and should run on any Ferret supported Unix / linux platform. The user interface requires java and javascript. A table describes the OS/browser combinations it has been tried on.