Interactive Java Graphics of Network-Distributed in-situ Data Sets in a Collaborative Tool Environment

The collaboration of scientists not located at the same site poses many difficulties. One difficulty is not being able to view and browse data simultaneously. This tool helps solve this problem by providing an application in a collaborative, interactive environment where one or more scientists, from their own desktops, can together display, manipulate, and comment on distributed in-situ data sets. Collaborative features include text and line annotations, high-lighting individual profiles, display of data values, and support for multiple users.

The tool runs in the collaborative environment, or ramework, called Habanero, developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). The interactive Java graphics library and the networking connections to distributed data sets are from the NOAAServer project.

The collaborative tool, which we will demonstrate, provides on-the-fly integrated browse images from geographically-distributed servers of in situ profile datasets. It allows two or more scientists at different locations to view these images, and allows annotations to simultaneously appear on all collaborating scientists' desktops. All collaborating scientists can pull up data, refine the data display, and interactively post messages.

Future developments could include notifying the prototype to include user feedback, including access to additional data servers, and focus on the robustness of the collaborative tool.