Fisheries Oceanography Collaboration Software

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Fisheries Oceanography Collaboration Software

• Donald DenboNOAA/PMEL-UW/JISAO
• Presented by
• Nancy Soreide
• NOAA/PMEL

AMS 2002/IIPS 10.3
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Introduction

• The Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated
  Investigations (FOCI) Program
• Interdisciplinary program seeking to understand
  the influence of the environment on valuable fish
  and shellfish stocks in Alaskan waters.
• FOCI Scientists at different locations require a
  collaborative tool to allow them to share data,
  graphics and information in a networked
  collaborative environment.

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What is a collaborative tool?

• A collaborative tool utilizes the network to
  enable interaction among geographically separated
  work groups
• All members view the same displays and
  information
• Add local data to the shared displays
• Add data from network archives to shared displays
• Save any data displayed to their local disk
• Displays can be marked up or annotated
• Discuss the data verbally with speaker phone or
  voice over IP

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FOCI Collaborative tool requirements

• Access to data and graphics in a networked
  collaborative tool environment
• Access to local and remote data files, graphics
• Standard collaboration tool features (annotation,
  whiteboard, etc)
• Secure Document Repository
• Secure location for sharing
• documents, e.g., proposals, papers in progress,
  etc.
• data, images
• prior collaborative session state
• Access control list for individual documents
  and/or folders
• Document version control

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Approach
Use standards-based software components and
infrastructure available from previous
development efforts and the Open Source community

• Climate Data Portal distributed in-situ data
  access system
• OceanShare collaborative tool prototype

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Climate Data PortalDistributed data access system

• The Climate Data Portal (CDP) was described IIPS
  papers 4.12 and 4.13
• Unified, networked access to geographically
  distributed data from observing systems and
  historical data archives
• Integrates Open Source applications and
  technologies
• CORBA network connections to Data Server
• SGT Java graphic toolkit
• NdEdit, an interactive Java tool for
  selection/subsetting from large in situ data
  collections (See IIPS paper 4.14)
• LDAP Directory Services
• XML Automated metadata generation tool

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OceanShareCollaborative tool prototype

• A collaborative Portal to distributed data
• Uniform, networked access to multiple
  geographically distributed data archives
• Java for platform independence and interactive
  graphics
• Collaborative environment provided by Habanero
• Habanaero is a distributed interpersonal
  communications framework supporting multi-user,
  collaborative work environments

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NCSA Habanero

• Developers toolkit

• Transforms Java applications into multiple-user
  collaborative environments

• Collaborative features
• Whiteboard, Text Editor, WWW Shared Session,
  Audio Chat

• Platform independent (PC, Mac, Unix)

• Freely available from NCSA http//www.ncsa.uiuc.e
  du/SDG/Software/Habanero/

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OceanShare Architecture and Data Flow
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OceanShareCollaborative tool prototype

• Lacks current features of Climate Data Portal
• Limited to ocean profile data types
• Lacks a Secure Document Repository

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Implementation

• Enhance OceanShare by integrating features from
  the Climate Data Portal
• Integrate ndEdit data selection tool
• Implement textual and graphical annotation tools
• Extend data handling to include time series and
  gridded data
• Implement session save and restore
• Develop a Secure Document Repository to share
  documents, data, images, and collaborative
  session state
• Access control by individual document and/or
  folder
• Easy administration of privileges
• Document version control

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Secure Document Repository (SDR)

• Utilize
• Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning
  (WebDAV)
• WebDAV is a standard protocol for remote access
  of files
• WebDAV-enabled clients can access distributed
  file systems via http protocol from commercial
  applications
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0
• MacOS X, Dreamweaver, Adobe Acrobat 5, Microsoft
  Office
• Developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force
  (IETF)
• Slide for content management
• The SDR will provide distributed file access
  from
• Custom Java applications
• WebDAV-enabled commercial applications (i.e.,
  Internet Explorer)
• to download/upload documents
• set file/directory protections

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SDR Design
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Technologies Utilized

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
• Java language and SGT Java graphics toolkit
• Habanero collaborative framework
• Tomcat servlet container
• Slide content management framework
• Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning
  (WebDAV)
• Apache Jakarta Project http based servers

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NOAA/PMEL Technologies from which this project
leverages

• NOAAServer
• OceanShare
• Scientific Graphics Toolkit (SGT)
• EPIC Management, display, and analysis of
  geophysical data
• Climate Data Portal (CDP)
• NdEdit

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Future Directions

• Implement document version control
• when available in Jakarta-Slide
• Data analysis capabilities
• Project management
• e.g. time line, task flow
• Instrumentation access
• Advanced visualizations
• e.g. VRML, area and contour plotting, GIS maps