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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1996

Towards the Interoperability of Web, Database, and Mass Storage Technologies for Petabyte Archives

At the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a massive data analysis system (MDAS) is being developed to support data-intensive applications that manipulate terabyte sized data sets. The objective is to support scientific application access to data whether it is located at a Web site, stored as an object in a database, and/or storage in an archival storage system. We are developing a suite of demonstration programs which illustrate how Web, database (DBMS), and archival storage (mass storage) technologies can be integrated. An application presentation interface is being designed that integrates data access to all of these sources. We have developed a data movement interface between the Illustra object-relational database and the NSL UniTree archival storage system running in a production mode at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. With this interface, an Illustra client can transparently access data on UniTree under the control of the Illustr DBMS server. The current implementation is based on the creation of a new DBMS storage manager class, and a set of library functions that allow the manipulation and migration of data stored as Illustra 'large objects'. We have extended this interface to allow a Web client application to control data movement between its local disk, the Web server, the DBMS Illustra server, and the UniTree mass storage environment. This paper describes some of the current approaches successfully integrating these technologies. This framework is measured against a representative sample of environmental data extracted from the San Diego Ba Environmental Data Repository. Practical lessons are drawn and critical research areas are highlighted.

Moore, Reagan↗
NASA NTRS1999

Prototype and Evaluation of AutoHelp: A Case-based, Web-accessible Help Desk System for EOSDIS

AutoHelp is a case-based, Web-accessible help desk for users of the EOSDIS. Its uses a combination of advanced computer and Web technologies, knowledge-based systems tools, and cognitive engineering to offload the current, person-intensive, help desk facilities at the DAACs. As a case-based system, AutoHelp starts with an organized database of previous help requests (questions and answers) indexed by a hierarchical category structure that facilitates recognition by persons seeking assistance. As an initial proof-of-concept demonstration, a month of email help requests to the Goddard DAAC were analyzed and partially organized into help request cases. These cases were then categorized to create a preliminary case indexing system, or category structure. This category structure allows potential users to identify or recognize categories of questions, responses, and sample cases similar to their needs. Year one of this research project focused on the development of a technology demonstration. User assistance 'cases' are stored in an Oracle database in a combination of tables linking prototypical questions with responses and detailed examples from the email help requests analyzed to date. When a potential user accesses the AutoHelp system, a Web server provides a Java applet that displays the category structure of the help case base organized by the needs of previous users. When the user identifies or requests a particular type of assistance, the applet uses Java database connectivity (JDBC) software to access the database and extract the relevant cases. The demonstration will include an on-line presentation of how AutoHelp is currently structured. We will show how a user might request assistance via the Web interface and how the AutoHelp case base provides assistance. The presentation will describe the DAAC data collection, case definition, and organization to date, as well as the AutoHelp architecture. It will conclude with the year 2 proposal to more fully develop the case base, the user interface (including the category structure), interface with the current DAAC Help System, the development of tools to add new cases, and user testing and evaluation at (perhaps) the Goddard DAAC.

Mitchell, Christine M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Autonomous Satellite Command and Control through the World Wide Web: Phase 3

NASA's New Millenium Program (NMP) has identified a variety of revolutionary technologies that will support orders of magnitude improvements in the capabilities of spacecraft missions. This program's Autonomy team has focused on science and engineering automation technologies. In doing so, it has established a clear development roadmap specifying the experiments and demonstrations required to mature these technologies. The primary developmental thrusts of this roadmap are in the areas of remote agents, PI/operator interface, planning/scheduling fault management, and smart execution architectures. Phases 1 and 2 of the ASSET Project (previously known as the WebSat project) have focused on establishing World Wide Web-based commanding and telemetry services as an advanced means of interfacing a spacecraft system with the PI and operators. Current automated capabilities include Web-based command submission, limited contact scheduling, command list generation and transfer to the ground station, spacecraft support for demonstrations experiments, data transfer from the ground station back to the ASSET system, data archiving, and Web-based telemetry distribution. Phase 2 was finished in December 1996. During January-December 1997 work was commenced on Phase 3 of the ASSET Project. Phase 3 is the subject of this report. This phase permitted SSDL and its project partners to expand the ASSET system in a variety of ways. These added capabilities included the advancement of ground station capabilities, the adaptation of spacecraft on-board software, and the expansion of capabilities of the ASSET management algorithms. Specific goals of Phase 3 were: (1) Extend Web-based goal-level commanding for both the payload PI and the spacecraft engineer; (2) Support prioritized handling of multiple PIs as well as associated payload experimenters; (3) Expand the number and types of experiments supported by the ASSET system and its associated spacecraft; (4) Implement more advanced resource management, modeling and fault management capabilities that integrate the space and ground segments of the space system hardware; (5) Implement a beacon monitoring test; (6) Implement an experimental blackboard controller for space system management; (7) Further define typical ground station developments required for Internet-based remote control and for full system automation of the PI-to-spacecraft link. Each of those goals is examined in the next section. Significant sections of this report were also published as a conference paper.

Cantwell, Brian↗
NASA NTRS1999

Using the World Wide Web for GIDEP Problem Data Processing at Marshall Space Flight Center

Since April 1997, Marshall Space Flight Center has been using electronic transfer and the web to support our processing of the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP) and NASA ALERT information. Specific aspects include: (1) Extraction of ASCII text information from GIDEP for loading into Word documents for e-mail to ALERT actionees; (2) Downloading of GIDEP form image formats in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) for internal storage display on the MSFC ALERT web page; (3) Linkage of stored GRDEP problem forms with summary information for access from the MSFC ALERT Distribution Summary Chart or from an html table of released MSFC ALERTs (4) Archival of historic ALERTs for reference by GIDEP ID, MSFC ID, or MSFC release date; (5) On-line tracking of ALERT response status using a Microsoft Access database and the web (6) On-line response to ALERTs from MSFC actionees through interactive web forms. The technique, benefits, effort, coordination, and lessons learned for each aspect are covered herein.

McPherson, John W.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Web Exploration Tools for a Fast Federated Optical Survey Database

We implemented several new web-based tools to improve the efficiency and versatility of access to the APS Catalog of the POSS I (Palomar Observatory-National Geographic Sky Survey) and its associated image database. The most important addition was a federated database system to link the APS Catalog and image database into one Internet-accessible database. With the FDBS, the queries and transactions on the integrated database are performed as if it were a single database. We installed Myriad the FDBS developed by Professor Jaideep Srivastava and members of his group in the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department. It is the first system to provide schema integration, query processing and optimization, and transaction management capabilities in a single framework. The attached figure illustrates the Myriad architecture. The FDBS permits horizontal access to the data, not just vertical. For example, for the APS, queries can be made not only by sky position, but also by any parameter present in either of the databases. APS users will be able to produce an image of all the blue galaxies and stellar sources for comparison with x-ray source error ellipses from AXAF (X Ray Astrophysics Facility) (Chandra) for example. The FDBS is now available as a beta release with the appropriate query forms at our web site. While much of our time was occupied with adapting Myriad to the APS environment, we also made major changes in Star Base, our DBMS for the Catalog, at the web interface to improve its efficiency for issuing and processing queries. Star Base is now three times faster for large queries. Improvements were also made at the web end of the image database for faster access; although work still needs to be done to the image database itself for more efficient return with the FDBS. During the past few years, we made several improvements to the database pipeline that creates the individual plate databases queries by StarBase. The changes include improved positions especially for galaxies, using a new median centroider and integrated magnitudes for galaxies with an improved density-to-intensity calibration with a "sky" background subtraction. In the original version of StarBase the object classification fainter than 19.5-20.0 mag., was an extrapolation of the networks trained on brighter objects. We have used a new catalog of galaxies at the NGP to train a neural network on objects fainter than 20th mag. This improved classification is used in the new version of StarBase. We have also added a FITS table option for the returned data from queries on the object catalog. The APS image database includes images in both colors so we have added a tool for querying the image database in both colors simultaneously. The images can be displayed in parallel or blinked for comparison.

Humphreys, Roberta M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

A Web Based Collaborative Design Environment for Spacecraft

In this era of shrinking federal budgets in the USA we need to dramatically improve our efficiency in the spacecraft engineering design process. We have come up with a method which captures much of the experts' expertise in a dataflow design graph: Seamlessly connectable set of local and remote design tools; Seamlessly connectable web based design tools; and Web browser interface to the developing spacecraft design. We have recently completed our first web browser interface and demonstrated its utility in the design of an aeroshell using design tools located at web sites at three NASA facilities. Multiple design engineers and managers are now able to interrogate the design engine simultaneously and find out what the design looks like at any point in the design cycle, what its parameters are, and how it reacts to adverse space environments.

Dunphy, Julia↗
NASA NTRS2000

Web-Altairis: An Internet-Enabled Ground System

This paper describes Web-Altairis, an Internet-enabled ground system software package funded by the Advanced Automation and Architectures Branch (Code 588) of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Web-Altairis supports the trend towards "lights out" ground systems, where the control center is unattended and problems are resolved by remote operators. This client/server software runs on most popular platforms and provides for remote data visualization using the rich functionality of the VisAGE toolkit. Web-Altairis also supports satellite commanding over the Internet. This paper describes the structure of Web-Altairis and VisAGE, the underlying technologies, the provisions for security, and our experiences in developing and testing the software.

Miller, Phil↗
NASA NTRS2003

Interactive, Secure Web-enabled Aircraft Engine Simulation Using XML Databinding Integration

This paper discusses the detailed design of an XML databinding framework for aircraft engine simulation. The framework provides an object interface to access and use engine data. while at the same time preserving the meaning of the original data. The Language independent representation of engine component data enables users to move around XML data using HTTP through disparate networks. The application of this framework is demonstrated via a web-based turbofan propulsion system simulation using the World Wide Web (WWW). A Java Servlet based web component architecture is used for rendering XML engine data into HTML format and dealing with input events from the user, which allows users to interact with simulation data from a web browser. The simulation data can also be saved to a local disk for archiving or to restart the simulation at a later time.

Lin, Risheng↗
NASA NTRS2003

Web Audio/Video Streaming Tool

In order to promote NASA-wide educational outreach program to educate and inform the public of space exploration, NASA, at Kennedy Space Center, is seeking efficient ways to add more contents to the web by streaming audio/video files. This project proposes a high level overview of a framework for the creation, management, and scheduling of audio/video assets over the web. To support short-term goals, the prototype of a web-based tool is designed and demonstrated to automate the process of streaming audio/video files. The tool provides web-enabled users interfaces to manage video assets, create publishable schedules of video assets for streaming, and schedule the streaming events. These operations are performed on user-defined and system-derived metadata of audio/video assets stored in a relational database while the assets reside on separate repository. The prototype tool is designed using ColdFusion 5.0.

Guruvadoo, Eranna K.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Grid Enabled Geospatial Catalogue Web Service

Geospatial Catalogue Web Service is a vital service for sharing and interoperating volumes of distributed heterogeneous geospatial resources, such as data, services, applications, and their replicas over the web. Based on the Grid technology and the Open Geospatial Consortium (0GC) s Catalogue Service - Web Information Model, this paper proposes a new information model for Geospatial Catalogue Web Service, named as GCWS which can securely provides Grid-based publishing, managing and querying geospatial data and services, and the transparent access to the replica data and related services under the Grid environment. This information model integrates the information model of the Grid Replica Location Service (RLS)/Monitoring & Discovery Service (MDS) with the information model of OGC Catalogue Service (CSW), and refers to the geospatial data metadata standards from IS0 19115, FGDC and NASA EOS Core System and service metadata standards from IS0 191 19 to extend itself for expressing geospatial resources. Using GCWS, any valid geospatial user, who belongs to an authorized Virtual Organization (VO), can securely publish and manage geospatial resources, especially query on-demand data in the virtual community and get back it through the data-related services which provide functions such as subsetting, reformatting, reprojection etc. This work facilitates the geospatial resources sharing and interoperating under the Grid environment, and implements geospatial resources Grid enabled and Grid technologies geospatial enabled. It 2!so makes researcher to focus on science, 2nd not cn issues with computing ability, data locztic~, processir,g and management. GCWS also is a key component for workflow-based virtual geospatial data producing.

Chen, Ai-Jun↗
NASA NTRS2006

Evolving EO-1 Sensor Web Testbed Capabilities in Pursuit of GEOSS

A viewgraph presentation to evolve sensor web capabilities in pursuit of capabilities to support Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) is shown. The topics include: 1) Vision to Enable Sensor Webs with "Hot Spots"; 2) Vision Extended for Communication/Control Architecture for Missions to Mars; 3) Key Capabilities Implemented to Enable EO-1 Sensor Webs; 4) One of Three Experiments Conducted by UMBC Undergraduate Class 12-14-05 (1 - 3); 5) Closer Look at our Mini-Rovers and Simulated Mars Landscae at GSFC; 6) Beginning to Implement Experiments with Standards-Vision for Integrated Sensor Web Environment; 7) Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC); 8) GMSEC Component Catalog; 9) Core Flight System (CFS) and Extension for GMSEC for Flight SW; 10) Sensor Modeling Language; 11) Seamless Ground to Space Integrated Message Bus Demonstration (completed December 2005); 12) Other Experiments in Queue; 13) Acknowledgements; and 14) References.

Mandi, Dan↗
NASA NTRS2007

Sensor Webs with a Service-Oriented Architecture for On-demand Science Products

This paper describes the work being managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Information System Division (ISD) under a NASA Earth Science Technology Ofice (ESTO) Advanced Information System Technology (AIST) grant to develop a modular sensor web architecture which enables discovery of sensors and workflows that can create customized science via a high-level service-oriented architecture based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) web service standards. These capabilities serve as a prototype to a user-centric architecture for Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). This work builds and extends previous sensor web efforts conducted at NASA/GSFC using the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) satellite and other low-earth orbiting satellites.

Mandl, Daniel↗
NASA NTRS2008

Earth Science Mining Web Services

To allow scientists further capabilities in the area of data mining and web services, the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and researchers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have developed a system to mine data at the source without the need of network transfers. The system has been constructed by linking together several pre-existing technologies: the Simple Scalable Script-based Science Processor for Measurements (S4PM), a processing engine at he GES DISC; the Algorithm Development and Mining (ADaM) system, a data mining toolkit from UAH that can be configured in a variety of ways to create customized mining processes; ActiveBPEL, a workflow execution engine based on BPEL (Business Process Execution Language); XBaya, a graphical workflow composer; and the EOS Clearinghouse (ECHO). XBaya is used to construct an analysis workflow at UAH using ADam components, which are also installed remotely at the GES DISC, wrapped as Web Services. The S4PM processing engine searches ECHO for data using space-time criteria, staging them to cache, allowing the ActiveBPEL engine to remotely orchestras the processing workflow within S4PM. As mining is completed, the output is placed in an FTP holding area for the end user. The goals are to give users control over the data they want to process, while mining data at the data source using the server's resources rather than transferring the full volume over the internet. These diverse technologies have been infused into a functioning, distributed system with only minor changes to the underlying technologies. The key to the infusion is the loosely coupled, Web-Services based architecture: All of the participating components are accessible (one way or another) through (Simple Object Access Protocol) SOAP-based Web Services.

Pham, Long↗
NASA NTRS2010

World Wide Web Metaphors for Search Mission Data

A software program that searches and browses mission data emulates a Web browser, containing standard meta - phors for Web browsing. By taking advantage of back-end URLs, users may save and share search states. Also, since a Web interface is familiar to users, training time is reduced. Familiar back and forward buttons move through a local search history. A refresh/reload button regenerates a query, and loads in any new data. URLs can be constructed to save search results. Adding context to the current search is also handled through a familiar Web metaphor. The query is constructed by clicking on hyperlinks that represent new components to the search query. The selection of a link appears to the user as a page change; the choice of links changes to represent the updated search and the results are filtered by the new criteria. Selecting a navigation link changes the current query and also the URL that is associated with it. The back button can be used to return to the previous search state. This software is part of the MSLICE release, which was written in Java. It will run on any current Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system.

Norris, Jeffrey S.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Efficient Web Services Policy Combination

Large-scale Web security systems usually involve cooperation between domains with non-identical policies. The network management and Web communication software used by the different organizations presents a stumbling block. Many of the tools used by the various divisions do not have the ability to communicate network management data with each other. At best, this means that manual human intervention into the communication protocols used at various network routers and endpoints is required. Developing practical, sound, and automated ways to compose policies to bridge these differences is a long-standing problem. One of the key subtleties is the need to deal with inconsistencies and defaults where one organization proposes a rule on a particular feature, and another has a different rule or expresses no rule. A general approach is to assign priorities to rules and observe the rules with the highest priorities when there are conflicts. The present methods have inherent inefficiency, which heavily restrict their practical applications. A new, efficient algorithm combines policies utilized for Web services. The method is based on an algorithm that allows an automatic and scalable composition of security policies between multiple organizations. It is based on defeasible policy composition, a promising approach for finding conflicts and resolving priorities between rules. In the general case, policy negotiation is an intractable problem. A promising method, suggested in the literature, is when policies are represented in defeasible logic, and composition is based on rules for non-monotonic inference. In this system, policy writers construct metapolicies describing both the policy that they wish to enforce and annotations describing their composition preferences. These annotations can indicate whether certain policy assertions are required by the policy writer or, if not, under what circumstances the policy writer is willing to compromise and allow other assertions to take precedence. Meta-policies are specified in defeasible logic, a computationally efficient non-monotonic logic developed to model human reasoning. One drawback of this method is that at one point the algorithm starts an exhaustive search of all subsets of the set of conclusions of a defeasible theory. Although the propositional defeasible logic has linear complexity, the set of conclusions here may be large, especially in real-life practical cases. This phenomenon leads to an inefficient exponential explosion of complexity. The current process of getting a Web security policy from combination of two meta-policies consists of two steps. The first is generating a new meta-policy that is a composition of the input meta-policies, and the second is mapping the meta-policy onto a security policy. The new algorithm avoids the exhaustive search in the current algorithm, and provides a security policy that matches all requirements of the involved metapolicies.

Vatan, Farrokh↗
NASA NTRS2003

Web Program for Development of GUIs for Cluster Computers

WIGLAF (a Web Interface Generator and Legacy Application Facade) is a computer program that provides a Web-based, distributed, graphical-user-interface (GUI) framework that can be adapted to any of a broad range of application programs, written in any programming language, that are executed remotely on any cluster computer system. WIGLAF enables the rapid development of a GUI for controlling and monitoring a specific application program running on the cluster and for transferring data to and from the application program. The only prerequisite for the execution of WIGLAF is a Web-browser program on a user's personal computer connected with the cluster via the Internet. WIGLAF has a client/server architecture: The server component is executed on the cluster system, where it controls the application program and serves data to the client component. The client component is an applet that runs in the Web browser. WIGLAF utilizes the Extensible Markup Language to hold all data associated with the application software, Java to enable platform-independent execution on the cluster system and the display of a GUI generator through the browser, and the Java Remote Method Invocation software package to provide simple, effective client/server networking.

Czikmantory, Akos↗
NASA NTRS2011

The New Web-Based Hera Data Processing System at the HEASARC

The HEASARC at NASA/GSFC has provide an on-line astronomical data processing system called Hera for several years. Hera provides a complete data processing environment, including installed software packages, local data storage, and the CPU resources needed to process the user's data. The original design of Hera, however, has 2 requirements that has limited it's usefulness for some users, namely, that 1) the user must download and install a small helper program on their own computer before using Hera, and 2) Hera requires that several computer ports/sockets be allowed to communicate through any local firewalls on the users machine. Both of these restrictions can be problematic for some users, therefore we are now migrating Hera into a purely Web based environment which only requires a standard Web browser. The first release of Web Hera is now publicly available at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/webheara/. It currently provides a standard graphical interface for running hundreds of different data processing programs that are available in the HEASARC's ftools software package. Over the next year we to add more features to Web Hera, including an interactive command line interface, and more display and line capabilities.

Pence, W.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Sally Ride EarthKAM - Automated Image Geo-Referencing Using Google Earth Web Plug-In

Sally Ride EarthKAM is an educational program funded by NASA that aims to provide the public the ability to picture Earth from the perspective of the International Space Station (ISS). A computer-controlled camera is mounted on the ISS in a nadir-pointing window; however, timing limitations in the system cause inaccurate positional metadata. Manually correcting images within an orbit allows the positional metadata to be improved using mathematical regressions. The manual correction process is time-consuming and thus, unfeasible for a large number of images. The standard Google Earth program allows for the importing of KML (keyhole markup language) files that previously were created. These KML file-based overlays could then be manually manipulated as image overlays, saved, and then uploaded to the project server where they are parsed and the metadata in the database is updated. The new interface eliminates the need to save, download, open, re-save, and upload the KML files. Everything is processed on the Web, and all manipulations go directly into the database. Administrators also have the control to discard any single correction that was made and validate a correction. This program streamlines a process that previously required several critical steps and was probably too complex for the average user to complete successfully. The new process is theoretically simple enough for members of the public to make use of and contribute to the success of the Sally Ride EarthKAM project. Using the Google Earth Web plug-in, EarthKAM images, and associated metadata, this software allows users to interactively manipulate an EarthKAM image overlay, and update and improve the associated metadata. The Web interface uses the Google Earth JavaScript API along with PHP-PostgreSQL to present the user the same interface capabilities without leaving the Web. The simpler graphical user interface will allow the public to participate directly and meaningfully with EarthKAM. The use of similar techniques is being investigated to place ground-based observations in a Google Mars environment, allowing the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) Science Team a means to visualize the rover and its environment.

Andres, Paul M.↗