NVODS and the Development of OPeNDAP

• Main Authors: Peter Cornillon, Jennifer Adams, M. Benno Blumenthal, Eric Chassignet, Ethan Davis, Steve Hankin, James Kinter, Roy Mendelssohn, James T. Potemra, Ashwanth Srinivasan, Joseph Sirott
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Oceanography Society 2009-06-01
• Series: Oceanography
• Subjects: NOPP; ocean data; data access; distributed data system; data distribution
• Online Access: http://tos.org/oceanography/archive/22-2_cornillon.pdf
• ISSN: 1042-8275

The National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) funded a project to develop the foundation for a National Virtual Ocean Data System (NVODS) that has resulted in a robust data access framework for the exchange of oceanographic data (the Open source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol, or OPeNDAP) and a broad community of ocean data providers that remains vigorous and growing five years after NOPP funding ended. The project produced a number of "lessons learned" related to the design and implementation of distributed data systems that can inform other related efforts. These lessons are presented along with a brief overview of OPeNDAP and summaries of a number of projects that depend on OPeNDAP for data distribution.