Since 1995 NOAA has conducted an information system development effort aimed at unifying access to its geographically distributed databases across the World Wide Web (WWW). This activity, known as the NOAAServer Project, has resulted in an operational distributed system that provides data search, discovery, graphical browse, download, and ordering functions across 14 Web servers. Although not all functions are now available for all datasets, the user can, at minimum, obtain contact information on-line on how to obtain a copy of a dataset; currently, NOAAServer provides such service for more than 10,000 environmental datasets. The 14 servers represent data holdings in each of NOAA's five Line Offices and the three National Data Centers. The data holdings include both real-time and historical data and span the breadth of NOAA's research and operational datastreams and data products. They include satellite imagery, buoy El Nino observations in the Pacific, Weather Service daily observations, etc.
This initial implementation, though unique in its scope and function, has a number of limitations that stem from use of conventional Web technology (i.e., HTTP protocol and CGI programming) and from lack of uniformity in NOAA offices' approach to data dissemination (e.g., data display methods on the Web). These limitations have spurred the developers to construct a NOAAServer Version 2 that aims at a true enterprise solution to universal and unified data access. The enterprise solution is built on four elements: (1) use of Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard for network integration of heterogeneous systems; (2) a common enterprise data model that defines the syntax and semantics of data and data structures to enable user-computer and computer-computer iteractions; (3) Java programming in an object-oriented development environment to build highly interactive and true client-server applications that are platform-independent; and (4) a set of graphics tools that allow data from different sources to be integrated and displayed on a common background or on common axes. The NOAAServer Version 2 object-oriented CORBA solution ultimately also has the goal of supporting multiple clients. Such a solution holds the potential to free the user from the vexing problems of assimilating the myriad NOAA data sets for customized analysis and display on his desktop