The Live Access Server and DODS: Web visualization and data fusion for distributed holdings

Since 1994 the Live Access Server (LAS) has been providing visualization and subsetting of multi-dimensional scientific data for Web users. This talk presents a high level overview of the capabilities of LAS version 4, a distributed "data fusion" system designed to support collaborative research.

LAS is designed to be easily installed, configured, and maintained. An individual LAS site can provide access both to locally held data sets and to distributed data -- often data sets juxtaposed for purposes of comparison. Users can co-plot and difference (with regridding as required) the comparative data sets. Binary access to remote data sets is provided transparently by the Distributed Ocean Data System (DODS).

An individual LAS can designate a cluster of cooperating sites as "sisters". LAS automatically configures a group of sisters to appear to users as a single (virtual) site. For example, distributed modeling sites can configure themselves as a collaborative project where all model outputs are available for comparison within a single interface.

The technologies upon which the Live Access Server is built are presented in greater detail in another talk.