NOAA Data Centers have experienced an explosion in access since the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW) during 1994. Responding to this change has been difficult for the Data Centers and has generally involved extending existing systems to provide access over the WWW. The GEODAS System at the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) and CLIMVIS at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) are examples of such extensions. While these systems provide access to data, their proliferation leads to a situation that makes data integration difficult, is confusing for users, and is expensive to maintain. The NNDC (NOAA National Data Centers) Server is a cooperative project between the three data centers (NCDC, NGDC, and National Oceanographic Data Center ) designed to evolve the existing systems toward commonality. The end product will be a system, which will help users to intuitively locate data from any of the National Environmental, Satellite Data and Information Services (NESDIS) data archives.
The NNDC (NOAA National Data Centers) Server will begin by providing a common method for accessing the most frequently requested NESDIS data. The system will integrate software from NOAA/NESDIS legacy access and graphics systems and include new schemes using relational databases, Geographic Information Systems, and common graphing tools. This system will provide the user the best possible method for searching metadata and data.
We will describe how this web site will combine geographical, temporal, event, keyword and full text search capabilities to allow the user every opportunity to utilize their precise or general knowledge to quickly locate the exact data they need. The system will lead the user down the appropriate path to search, gather information, subset, visualize, download, and request off-line and on-line orders. The path will be dynamically created based on the user's knowledge, the user's system resources and the type of data or products they are requesting. The NNDC Server will rely heavily on relational databases to support this dynamic approach. The server will also integrate systems designed for accepting payment for those products that were only previously available through off-line requests. Customers with the necessary bandwidth will be able to choose between sophisticated or simple interfaces