VSO Query Construction

Virtual Solar Observatory Distributed Query Construction

J.B. Gurman¹, G. Dimitoglou¹, R. Bogart², A. Davey⁴, F. Hill³, P. Martens⁴, K. Tian², S. Wampler³

¹NASA Goddard / SDAC
²Stanford University / CSSA
³National Solar Observatory
⁴Montana State University / Physics Dept.

ABSTRACT.

Through a prototype implementation (Tian et al., this meeting) the VSO has already demonstrated the capability of unifying geographically distributed data sources following the Web Services paradigm and utilizing mechanisms such as the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

So far, four participating sites (Stanford, Montana State University, National Solar Observatory and the Solar Data Analysis Center) permit Web-accessible, time-based searches that allow browse access to a number of diverse data sets. Our latest work includes the extension of the simple, time-based queries to include numerous other searchable observation parameters. For VSO users, this extended functionality enables more refined searches. For the VSO, it is a proof of concept that more complex, distributed queries can be effectively constructed and that results from heterogeneous, remote sources can be synthesized and presented to users as a single, virtual data product.