Since May 2002, LTER and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have been working on a method to integrate data from LTER sites via the Web Services. A giant leap in progress toward creating and using these crosssite databases occurred at a recent workshop, attended by LTER information managers at the SDSC.
LTER Information Managers attended a workshop (2-4 Feb 2004) at the SDSC to learn and brainstorm about how web services technology can be used to create crosssite databases. Web Services enable easy application integration and resource sharing across platforms with a standardized XML messaging system (Figure 1). This collaboration was initially reported in the LTER Network News, Fall 2002. Through this workshop, SDSC scientists transferred information to the LTER community to build and deploy web services.
Workshop participants went through tutorials written by Longjiang Ding (SDSC) that used Java and Apache Axis software to publish data with web services. Participants learned to install a web service, and were able to test this process on their own laptops while receiving expert advice and explanations from instructors Longjiang Ding, Matt Jones (NCEAS), Robin Schoeninger (CAP), and Ashraf Memon (SDSC).
Participants conferred in small groups to explore possible uses for web services within the LTER Network. One group discussed how to augment the functionality of ClimDB with web services that would return metadata, visualize data, or return temporally aggregated data. Another group discussed the use of web services to retrieve and integrate spatial data to assess land use change. A third group focused on an international cooperative research project and the implementation of web services to collect, validate, organize, and share data from remote lakes at NTL and Taiwan (see pg. 16).
Participants departed with an understanding of the investment required to deploy web services, and how they can be used to accomplish network-wide or synthetic research goals, including the development of the Network Information System (NIS).
Finally, the workshop introduced the LTER information management community to other IT research projects that will facilitate data sharing and synthesis in the future. Presentations were given on semantic mediation, ontologies, and technologies for building the EcoGrid, which will provide standard interfaces to diverse data and computational networks using web and grid services (http://geon05.sdsc.edu:8080/lterws/workshop.jsp).
This workshop was the first of its kind, in which LTER information managers met with experts from other organizations for training in new technologies. Opportunities for technology transfer events like this underscore the value of the LTER IM group’s efforts to partner with institutions like SDSC for the benefit of the whole LTER community.
This workshop was supported by funds from the LTER Network Office, NSF, SDSC, GEON, and PRAGMA.