Glossary of Terms
Initial Publication Date: February 5, 2007
Glossary of Terms in Using Data (from providers, tool developers, and curriculum developers/educators) Many of these terms can be found in the UNIDATA Glossary
TERM Definition
ADaM Algorithm Development and Mining System under development at UAH
ADDE Abstract Distributed Data Environment, a McIDAS remote data access system
AMS American Meteorological Society
API Application Programming Interface
ArcInfo
ARM Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program DOE's global change research program
AVHRR The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer provides four- to six-band multispectral data from the NOAA polar-orbiting satellite series.
BEA A company, BEA Systems
BPEL4WS Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
CDC Cimate Diagnostics Center
Checksum This is a value calculated from a content of file by special algorithm. This algorithm is designed so that change even only one bit in the file data will cause the absolutely different checksum value.
CIESIN Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network
Client/server thick client Client/server approach that moves raw data or transformed subset of the raw data via the Internet, rather than images or other outputs. Client has all the power of application and display locally, while data is served remotely. Moving raw data rather than pictures provides more control to the user. ex. ADDE abstract data distribution environment protocol within McIDAS.
COLA Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
Compound Documents embedding access to data an duse of dynamic data into a web resource; a curriculum to model data linked with IDV+B41 integrated data viewer with datasets via a THREDDS delivery system
Concept models mental models generated in one's mind that helps the learner understand the relationship among the complex variables in the investigation; in the context of VGEE these are interactive java models to learn basic physics
COTS Commercial, off the self
CUAHSI Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrological Science, Inc.
DAAC Distributed Active Archive Center
DAML DARPA Agent Markup Language
DAML-S DAML Services, DAML-based Web Service Ontology
DAP Data Access Protocol
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Data Discovery Toolkit and Foundary DDTF aligning research applications IDL into a multimedia Macromedia/Flash to build education applications example: hurricane
Data library An associated index of available datasets
Data Model An infrastructure on which an array of data can be visualized, and a framework in which more complex models can be built
Data Systems involve some combination of data archive, visualization tool, access and delivery system, and some aspect of discovery
DDS DLESE Data Services
DDTF Hurricane Science Education Center
DEM Digital elevation model, and ArcInfo ASCIIGRID file format
DICOM
DIDAKT Data Integrated Documents and Knowledge Tools
DIMES DIstributed MEtadata System from George Mason University
DL Digital Library
DL discovery Digital Library system for discovering data, especially combined with client/server data access ex. When a user needs data from various sources, like radar, forecast model output, hydrological, satellite, and surface cover
DLESE Digital Library for Earth System Education
DLESE OAI server
DLESE Resource View of a particular web page, either data or educational product
DODS Distributed Oceanographic Data System, former name for the discipline-specific National Virtual Oceanographic Data System and the discipline-independent access protocols now known as OPeNDAP.
DPC DLESE Program Center
Earth Exploration Toolbook EET
EDMI/IDL Plugin Plugin for Director in making a multimedia application
EOS Earth Observing System NASA
EOS-WEBSTER
ESG Earth System Grid
ESiP Federation
ESL Earth Science Laboratory, NOAA
ESML Earth Science Markup Language
ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute
Expert Mode Requires the user to have operational knowledge in which to make changes e.g., xml knowledge to edit a GUI in THREDDS
FGDC Federal Geographic Data Committee
FNMOC Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center
Foundary Code "middleware" code developed at New Media Studios that aligns a multimedia application Director with a data software IDL
FTP protocols
GCMD Global Change Master Directory
GEMPAK
GEON The GEOsciences Network
georeferenced gridded dataset
GeoTIFF
GIS Geographic Information Systems, standards are set for these systems by OpenGIS and ISO
GIS dbf file A file format in database format that generally supports shapefile format
GIS Features Roads, lakes, plots of lands, points, and other geographic footprints often used by traditional GIS geographers
GML Geography Markup Language
GOES
GrADS Grid Analysis and Display System
GRID Computational Grids
GUI graphical user interface
Harvest Obtain data from a particular dataset
HDF
http Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used to transfer hypertext documents
Hyperspatial structured data Ex. High dimensionality ex. 3D jet stream rendering overlaid on a shape-file based surface map
IDD Internet Data Distribution system that uses decoders to transfer data into the format needed. example, used by McIDAS and GEMPAK distributed by UNIDATA
IDL Interactive Data Language
IDV Integrated data viewer
IMS
Index File maps a data layer name to a file location local or remote
INGRID INGRID is just a name for an online data system at LDEO. It's not an acronym
Ingrid Tools
Interactive software Software that allows the user to interact with data and visualization tools to conduct scientific investigations
Interoperability system must be calbale of finding data of interst, knows the data format, provides consistent syntactic and semantic metadata see rest of Peter Cornillon's slides
IRI International Research Institute for Climate Prediction at LDEO
IRIS Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
ISO International Standards Organization
ISO TC211 International Standards Organization TC211, a spatial data standard
Java An object-oriented, platform-independent language from Sun, now widely used to create applets and applications for the Internet
JNLP
JPEG with world TGW
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
LANDSAT Satelite data of Earth's surface, generally in the infrared band
LAS Live Access Server Example of a web-based request for access to data that then has a returned results
LDEO Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
LDM Local Data Manager
LDOR
LEAD Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery
Learner Centered Interface Students learning needs are the focus of design, rather than the data for the tool
Legacy, Stovepipe systems Work done on one computer, generally data stored on a device, user interface and graphical output completed on a single computer. Format conversions needed to match analysis and display tool, all done on a single computer.
MatLab
McIDAS
Memex A term that dates back to 1945 Vannevar Bush, meaning an instantaneous delivery of files and materials based on user defined inputs - a instantaneous supplement to your memory
Metadata Data about data
Metadata crosswalks from Danny's talk
Middleware Software designed to reformat data into a desired format
Multimedia application Director or Flash technologies, for example
MVH monitoring vegetation health with remote sensing data
MyWorld A GIS visualization tool developed at Northwestern University Danny Edelson
NALC MSS related to Landsat data
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research
ncBrowse netCDF File Browser
NCDC (NCEI) National Climatic Data Center
NCEP National Centers for Environmental Prediction
NcML The netCDF Markup Language
NDAP National Digital Archives Project
NDVI Normalized difference vegetation index
NetCDF
NEXRAD Next Generation Weather Radar
NGDC National Geophysical Data Center
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , U.S. Department of Commerce, replaced ESSA
NOAAport NOAA's broadcast data dissemination system
NOMADS The NOAA Operational Model Arvhive and Distribution System
NSDL National Science Digital Library
NSDL foundary build a community of data developers for education using commercial technologies combined in novel ways, including "real" time data
NSF National Science Foundation
NVODS National Virtual Ocean Data System formerly part of DODS
OAI Open Archives Initiative
OGC Open GIS Consortium
OGSA Open Grid Services Architecture
OPeNDAP Open source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol formerly DODS
OpenGIS protocols WMS, WFS, and WCD type serving applications
Pedagogy A way of teaching
PMEL Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory, NOAA
Portal A link to a particular site or server
Prior Knowledge Generally assuming a student knows something when beginning a learning process e.g, looking at data
Pull technology
Push technology
PythonCard PythonCard is a GUI construction kit for building cross-platform desktop applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, using the Python language.
Remote Sensing Collecting data from a distance e.g., satelite derived landsat data
Rich client synonymous with "thick client"
Saffolding
SAO Surface Airways Observations
Semantic metadata information about the variables e.g., T is temperature of sea surface in degrees C; provides information about the axis lables
Shapefile shp A file format typically used by ArcGIS software by ESRI, referring to vector, point, and polygon "shape" data
SHEF Standard Hydrologic Exchange Format
SINOTS Interoperability System for supporting the Italian Scientific Community working in Earth Observations from Space
SIS Scientific Information System sometimes used in contrast to GIS
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SOARS Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science, an NCAR program
SSEC Space Science and Engineering Center
SST Sea Surface Temperatures
SWEET Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology
Sweet spot usability for teachers in the classroom - a sweet spot between complexity and power
SWIKI adaptation of "wiki wiki," which means "go really quick." An online tool for quickly sharing information
Syntactic metadata syntax of data at the computer level e.g. T is a 20 by 40 element of floating point data; provides the ifnormation needed to read and plot the data, but in general not label the axis
Terabytes really, really big
THREDDS Thematic Real Time Environmental Distributed Data Services: Integrated environmental data and tools into the WWW, which combines push technology with several forms of pulls and DL discovery
TRMM PR
TRMM TMI
UAH University of Alabama-Huntsville
UCSB University of California Santa Barbara
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration of Web Services
UNIDATA University Data
UPC Unidata Program Center
URI delivers hdf data format see Pete Cornillon's talk
VGEE Virtual Geophysical Exploration Environment , which uses compound documents
Vis5D
VisAD visualization model that supports numerical data and mathematical operations
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WASP index from IRI data viewer
WCS Web Coverage Service
Web log blog publishable objects for the web
Web portal thin client Browser-based user interface where the client sends a few commands to a server, the server executes the commands, then sends back the desired output to the client. example: LAS
WFS WFS Web Feature Service
Widget
WFS Web Feature Server Open GIS Consortium Specification for serving geographic features in Geographic Markup Language
WMS Web Mapping Server
WSCI Web Service Choreography Interface
WSDL Web Services Description Language
WXP Weather Processor . A suite of programs/toolkit for analyzing and displaying meteorological data and satellite images. WXP originated at Purdue University but is now being developed by Unisys
WxWISE Weather Wise
XML Extensible Markup Language
TERM Definition
ADaM Algorithm Development and Mining System under development at UAH
ADDE Abstract Distributed Data Environment, a McIDAS remote data access system
AMS American Meteorological Society
API Application Programming Interface
ArcInfo
ARM Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program DOE's global change research program
AVHRR The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer provides four- to six-band multispectral data from the NOAA polar-orbiting satellite series.
BEA A company, BEA Systems
BPEL4WS Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
CDC Cimate Diagnostics Center
Checksum This is a value calculated from a content of file by special algorithm. This algorithm is designed so that change even only one bit in the file data will cause the absolutely different checksum value.
CIESIN Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network
Client/server thick client Client/server approach that moves raw data or transformed subset of the raw data via the Internet, rather than images or other outputs. Client has all the power of application and display locally, while data is served remotely. Moving raw data rather than pictures provides more control to the user. ex. ADDE abstract data distribution environment protocol within McIDAS.
COLA Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
Compound Documents embedding access to data an duse of dynamic data into a web resource; a curriculum to model data linked with IDV+B41 integrated data viewer with datasets via a THREDDS delivery system
Concept models mental models generated in one's mind that helps the learner understand the relationship among the complex variables in the investigation; in the context of VGEE these are interactive java models to learn basic physics
COTS Commercial, off the self
CUAHSI Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrological Science, Inc.
DAAC Distributed Active Archive Center
DAML DARPA Agent Markup Language
DAML-S DAML Services, DAML-based Web Service Ontology
DAP Data Access Protocol
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Data Discovery Toolkit and Foundary DDTF aligning research applications IDL into a multimedia Macromedia/Flash to build education applications example: hurricane
Data library An associated index of available datasets
Data Model An infrastructure on which an array of data can be visualized, and a framework in which more complex models can be built
Data Systems involve some combination of data archive, visualization tool, access and delivery system, and some aspect of discovery
DDS DLESE Data Services
DDTF Hurricane Science Education Center
DEM Digital elevation model, and ArcInfo ASCIIGRID file format
DICOM
DIDAKT Data Integrated Documents and Knowledge Tools
DIMES DIstributed MEtadata System from George Mason University
DL Digital Library
DL discovery Digital Library system for discovering data, especially combined with client/server data access ex. When a user needs data from various sources, like radar, forecast model output, hydrological, satellite, and surface cover
DLESE Digital Library for Earth System Education
DLESE OAI server
DLESE Resource View of a particular web page, either data or educational product
DODS Distributed Oceanographic Data System, former name for the discipline-specific National Virtual Oceanographic Data System and the discipline-independent access protocols now known as OPeNDAP.
DPC DLESE Program Center
Earth Exploration Toolbook EET
EDMI/IDL Plugin Plugin for Director in making a multimedia application
EOS Earth Observing System NASA
EOS-WEBSTER
ESG Earth System Grid
ESiP Federation
ESL Earth Science Laboratory, NOAA
ESML Earth Science Markup Language
ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute
Expert Mode Requires the user to have operational knowledge in which to make changes e.g., xml knowledge to edit a GUI in THREDDS
FGDC Federal Geographic Data Committee
FNMOC Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center
Foundary Code "middleware" code developed at New Media Studios that aligns a multimedia application Director with a data software IDL
FTP protocols
GCMD Global Change Master Directory
GEMPAK
GEON The GEOsciences Network
georeferenced gridded dataset
GeoTIFF
GIS Geographic Information Systems, standards are set for these systems by OpenGIS and ISO
GIS dbf file A file format in database format that generally supports shapefile format
GIS Features Roads, lakes, plots of lands, points, and other geographic footprints often used by traditional GIS geographers
GML Geography Markup Language
GOES
GrADS Grid Analysis and Display System
GRID Computational Grids
GUI graphical user interface
Harvest Obtain data from a particular dataset
HDF
http Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used to transfer hypertext documents
Hyperspatial structured data Ex. High dimensionality ex. 3D jet stream rendering overlaid on a shape-file based surface map
IDD Internet Data Distribution system that uses decoders to transfer data into the format needed. example, used by McIDAS and GEMPAK distributed by UNIDATA
IDL Interactive Data Language
IDV Integrated data viewer
IMS
Index File maps a data layer name to a file location local or remote
INGRID INGRID is just a name for an online data system at LDEO. It's not an acronym
Ingrid Tools
Interactive software Software that allows the user to interact with data and visualization tools to conduct scientific investigations
Interoperability system must be calbale of finding data of interst, knows the data format, provides consistent syntactic and semantic metadata see rest of Peter Cornillon's slides
IRI International Research Institute for Climate Prediction at LDEO
IRIS Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
ISO International Standards Organization
ISO TC211 International Standards Organization TC211, a spatial data standard
Java An object-oriented, platform-independent language from Sun, now widely used to create applets and applications for the Internet
JNLP
JPEG with world TGW
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
LANDSAT Satelite data of Earth's surface, generally in the infrared band
LAS Live Access Server Example of a web-based request for access to data that then has a returned results
LDEO Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
LDM Local Data Manager
LDOR
LEAD Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery
Learner Centered Interface Students learning needs are the focus of design, rather than the data for the tool
Legacy, Stovepipe systems Work done on one computer, generally data stored on a device, user interface and graphical output completed on a single computer. Format conversions needed to match analysis and display tool, all done on a single computer.
MatLab
McIDAS
Memex A term that dates back to 1945 Vannevar Bush, meaning an instantaneous delivery of files and materials based on user defined inputs - a instantaneous supplement to your memory
Metadata Data about data
Metadata crosswalks from Danny's talk
Middleware Software designed to reformat data into a desired format
Multimedia application Director or Flash technologies, for example
MVH monitoring vegetation health with remote sensing data
MyWorld A GIS visualization tool developed at Northwestern University Danny Edelson
NALC MSS related to Landsat data
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research
ncBrowse netCDF File Browser
NCDC (NCEI) National Climatic Data Center
NCEP National Centers for Environmental Prediction
NcML The netCDF Markup Language
NDAP National Digital Archives Project
NDVI Normalized difference vegetation index
NetCDF
NEXRAD Next Generation Weather Radar
NGDC National Geophysical Data Center
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , U.S. Department of Commerce, replaced ESSA
NOAAport NOAA's broadcast data dissemination system
NOMADS The NOAA Operational Model Arvhive and Distribution System
NSDL National Science Digital Library
NSDL foundary build a community of data developers for education using commercial technologies combined in novel ways, including "real" time data
NSF National Science Foundation
NVODS National Virtual Ocean Data System formerly part of DODS
OAI Open Archives Initiative
OGC Open GIS Consortium
OGSA Open Grid Services Architecture
OPeNDAP Open source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol formerly DODS
OpenGIS protocols WMS, WFS, and WCD type serving applications
Pedagogy A way of teaching
PMEL Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory, NOAA
Portal A link to a particular site or server
Prior Knowledge Generally assuming a student knows something when beginning a learning process e.g, looking at data
Pull technology
Push technology
PythonCard PythonCard is a GUI construction kit for building cross-platform desktop applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, using the Python language.
Remote Sensing Collecting data from a distance e.g., satelite derived landsat data
Rich client synonymous with "thick client"
Saffolding
SAO Surface Airways Observations
Semantic metadata information about the variables e.g., T is temperature of sea surface in degrees C; provides information about the axis lables
Shapefile shp A file format typically used by ArcGIS software by ESRI, referring to vector, point, and polygon "shape" data
SHEF Standard Hydrologic Exchange Format
SINOTS Interoperability System for supporting the Italian Scientific Community working in Earth Observations from Space
SIS Scientific Information System sometimes used in contrast to GIS
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SOARS Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science, an NCAR program
SSEC Space Science and Engineering Center
SST Sea Surface Temperatures
SWEET Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology
Sweet spot usability for teachers in the classroom - a sweet spot between complexity and power
SWIKI adaptation of "wiki wiki," which means "go really quick." An online tool for quickly sharing information
Syntactic metadata syntax of data at the computer level e.g. T is a 20 by 40 element of floating point data; provides the ifnormation needed to read and plot the data, but in general not label the axis
Terabytes really, really big
THREDDS Thematic Real Time Environmental Distributed Data Services: Integrated environmental data and tools into the WWW, which combines push technology with several forms of pulls and DL discovery
TRMM PR
TRMM TMI
UAH University of Alabama-Huntsville
UCSB University of California Santa Barbara
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration of Web Services
UNIDATA University Data
UPC Unidata Program Center
URI delivers hdf data format see Pete Cornillon's talk
VGEE Virtual Geophysical Exploration Environment , which uses compound documents
Vis5D
VisAD visualization model that supports numerical data and mathematical operations
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WASP index from IRI data viewer
WCS Web Coverage Service
Web log blog publishable objects for the web
Web portal thin client Browser-based user interface where the client sends a few commands to a server, the server executes the commands, then sends back the desired output to the client. example: LAS
WFS WFS Web Feature Service
Widget
WFS Web Feature Server Open GIS Consortium Specification for serving geographic features in Geographic Markup Language
WMS Web Mapping Server
WSCI Web Service Choreography Interface
WSDL Web Services Description Language
WXP Weather Processor . A suite of programs/toolkit for analyzing and displaying meteorological data and satellite images. WXP originated at Purdue University but is now being developed by Unisys
WxWISE Weather Wise
XML Extensible Markup Language