Report on the First Workshop for the Distributed Oceanographic Data System - PDF version

This is the report from the first workshop (Sept 29 - Oct 1 1993) held when we began the development work that has ultimately lead to the formation of OPeNDAP (and DAP2, DAP4, Hyrax, et cetera). It's an interesting document from several perspectives, particularly for the things that have remained largely constant for nearly twenty years in the often fast-changing world of the web. Note that the original design did not make use of the web infrastructure - that was not folded into the design until 1994, when NCSA's Mosaic browser really gained traction. Note that the report is a postscript file. We have uploaded a recently produced PDF version.

Summary of the report

The Oceanography Society, funded by NASA and NOAA, is organizing a workshop series to define a client-server based distributed system for accessing oceanographic data over the Internet. The system aims to help individual scientists and national archives transition into data providers by installing servers on their CPUs. The series comprises three workshops; the first focused on system architecture and communication objects. The second, planned for the summer, will assess progress and define a prototype, while the third will present the model to the oceanographic community. Requirements include easy data location, incorporation of programming language interfaces, and ease of installation and extensibility. The report outlines the discussions, requirements, and progress of the first workshop. Participants discussed the need for the system to be useful, providing access to both archive and PI-held data sets, and facilitating data distribution and submission to archive centers. Additionally, requirements include easy installation, extensibility, and incorporation of programming language interfaces. The workshop series aims to develop the Oceanographic Data System (DODS), and the report outlines the discussions, requirements, and progress of the first workshop.