AN INTEGRATED DATA MANAGEMENT , RETRIEVAL AND VISUALIZATION SYSTEM FOR EARTH SCIENCE DATASETS

This paper describes our work in developing an integrated data management, retrieval and visualization system for earth science datasets with extensibility, scalability, uniformity, transparency and heterogeneity. XML based metadata mechanism is the foundation of data management in our system. Dynamically generated query GUI makes it easy and convenient for scientists to access and retrieval diverse datasets. Scientific visualization toolkits display huge amount of data graphically to help researchers have better understanding of the data and gain valuable insights of the datasets under investigation. This system helps earth scientists use, share and visualize data more efficiently. Without knowing any information of the physical storage location, content, structure and format of each dataset instance, and without programming a single line of codes, scientists can now query heterogeneous data easily, and view and understand the retrieved data in analytical and graphical ways.