Interoperability of Web Service-Based Data Access and Processing: Experience Using the DataFed System (2006)

Abstract: This is a progress report on the federated data system, DataFed, partially supported by a NASA REASoN project. In DataFed, the distributed data sources are federated by applying a universal, multi-dimensional data model. The physical and semantic homogenization is accomplished by wrapper services. Data processing is performed through web services, which themselves can be distributed. Data processing applications are created by the composition of the distributed service components. International Standards and Protocols are used to establish interoperability of the service components. In this work we have adapted the OGC web services as a standard protocol for Air Quality data access. This report summarizes our experiences with the OGC W*S based service composition. It includes the results of our participation in the GALEON (Geo-interface to Atmosphere, Land, Earth, Ocean netCDF) Interoperability Experiment. We have created a WCS test server to deliver a wide variety of point, grid an image coverage data. Our goal was to evaluate the WCS protocol for accessing coverages of different types arising from a variety Earth observation and modeling systems. We are most encouraged by the possibilities but recognize that considerable work is to be done on the extending the describeCoverage schema to accommodate new coverage types and the returned data types. The GEOSS Services Network (GSN) is a persistent network of a publicly accessible OpenGIS-accessible services for demonstration and research regarding interoperability arrangements in GEOSS. The May 06 Beijing GSN demo included a collaboration chain between NOAA-NCDC, Unidata and DataFed using OGC standard interfaces.