![]() RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES VOL. 11, RE1008, doi:10.2205/2009ES000355, 2009
Global Access to Geomagnetic data – Concept and Implementation of a Virtual ObservatoryV. G. Petrov Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation of Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN), Troitsk, Moscow region, Russia V. O. Papitashvili University of Michigan, Michigan, USAAbstractThe traditional concept of a virtual observatory assumes the establishment of a World Wide Web server (Portal) which (upon data inquiries) connects to those data provider sites that are known to the server. Upon establishing such connection(s), the Portal downloads requested data, reformats them to the required data format, and submits back to the user. The main advantage of such approach is a simplicity of the client-side software and easiness in maintaining the service. At the same time, there are some disadvantages – the network traffic increases and the HTTP protocol has some limitations that do not allow achieving real effectiveness in the data processing and visualization. Often special codes (applets) are created and downloaded to the client computers to improve efficiency of a virtual observatory. Further development of this approach is presented by Papitashvili at al, [2003, 2006] where two possible ways for the remote data access are offered utilizing the same code – the Web-based VGMO and the stand-alone VGMO. The former utilizes the standard approach uploading a Java applet to the client computer; the latter works directly with the data provider (client) Web sites (or with data provider computer which are set in the Internet). Two versions of the stand-alone VGMO are developed to be run under the Windows and MacOS X operation systems. Our experience in using the Web-based Portal VGMO shows two distinctive problems when working with the remote data sources:
Received 22 October 2009; accepted 28 October 2009; published 30 November 2009. Keywords: geomagnetic data, virtual observatories; magnetic observatories ![]() Citation: (2009), Global Access to Geomagnetic data – Concept and Implementation of a Virtual Observatory, Russ. J. Earth Sci., 11, RE1008, doi:10.2205/2009ES000355. Copyright 2009 by the Russian Journal of Earth Sciences |