Managing heterogeneous databases to support diverse product requirements

Presents a conceptual design for storing, managing and assessing data to optimize oceanographic product development. It shows that data sets can be combined in many ways to satisfy customer requests for operational oceanography products if special care is given to the underlying data architecture and data interface. To accommodate varied product requirements, the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) has adopted a geospatial data interface that contains both a metadata catalog and data transformation features. The geospatial data interface uses the metadata catalog containing spatial reference information to find and retrieve data in a usable, georeferenced format. Geographical information system (GIS) applications can directly access the catalog through a spatial index maintained by commercial off-the-shelf spatial data applications. This same data architecture can be utilized to maintain an object-oriented feature database as well. This conceptual design may be useful to other oceanographic organizations that must represent data in many ways to satisfy customer requests.