Distributed data servers and Web interface in the Climate Data Portal

The Climate Data Portal provides consistent and uniform access to geographically distributed data collections, through an interactive Web interface or networked Java client application. The Climate Data Portal system is fully object oriented, utilizing off-the-shelf the CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) networking middleware to establish the communication between data servers and client interface. The use of CORBA services provides network "awareness" of the distributed data servers, and eliminates the need for a central registry or Web crawlers to locate and interrogate the distributed data servers. The current Climate Data Portal system consists of distributed data servers located at PMEL (real-time TAO buoy data and PMEL archived i n situ data collection), University of Hawaii (sea level data from Sea Level Center), and NODC (the Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program dataset). This paper describes technologies used to develop and support the Web interactive client interface and the distributed data servers in the Climate Data Portal system