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20000302: request for representative sizes of GOES imagery files (cont.)

>From: Unidata User Support <address@hidden>
>Organization: Unidata Program Center
>Keywords: 200003022014.NAA11907 GVAR imager sounder AREA files archive

Dee,

I am CCing this to Jennie Moody, the Chair of our User's Committee.  I
am sure that she will be especially interested in the free online access to
satellite data for EDU sites.

>One problem you may run into if you begin doing a lot of serving off of the
>Unidata machine here is the lack of disk space and horsepower. This machine is
>pretty old (1995) 60MHZ SPARC20.

OK.  I thought that this might be an issue.

>I have asked your program manager to consider replacing this machine I even
>forwarded the memo about applying for NSF hardware but I don't think anything 
>was done with it.

I certainly havn't heard anything about this before.  Seems to be a lack of
communication between our PM and us.

>Currently the monitor is dying and everything looks yellow. The
>machine has ~9GB for data and that is pretty much used up.

OK.  I just talked with Dave Fulker and Joanne Graham about this
situation.  Dave commented that we should spec out a replacement
machine that would be able to handle increasing server requests for
data like this.  I will be working with Mike Schmidt, our system
administrator, on this in the next few days.  Right off of the top of
my head, the machine will probably end up being something like a dual
600 (or faster) Mhz Pentium III with a couple GB of RAM and significant
(like up to 100 GB of Ultra SCSI-2) disk.  We would require, however,
that, even though the machine is housed at SSEC, we have total access
to it (i.e.  root).

>You are aware of the new .EDU data request thing right?

No, I was not.  I just talked to Dave about this situation, and he relayed
an email from Bob Fox regarding this.  Bob's note suggests that we can
and should advertise this capability to our community:

"Through yesterday, we have received one request from an .edu address
for three scenes of archived GOES data, which was promptly filled.

Given this underwhelming demand for the data, I am willing to more
widely spread the word of the data availability to the Unidata
community, in whatever manner you think best. If perchance you think it
is best to wait and do this at the UserCom meeting, that is fine with
me."

I will be putting together an announcement to our ldm-users, gembud,
and mcidas-x email lists regarding this fantastic opportunity.  Would
you like me to run the announcement by you before sending it out?  If
not, I might be sending it out before Monday.

>DataCenter home page, Archive, and then EDU Requests.

For Jennie's reference, here is the URL for the SSEC Data Center home page:

SSEC Data Center HomePage
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/datacenter

>We'll get you some numbers very soon.

Thanks for the help!

>Dee


>Unidata Support wrote:
>>
>> Dee,
>>
>> >Just want to be sure I know what you want.  We can provide you with a
>> >"grid" that lists all the products for GOES, by band, and their sizes.
>>
>> This sounds great!  It will allow me to give our User's Committee
>> members some reasonable information about what could be made available
>> through the Unidata-Wisconsin data stream; how often the products could
>> be made available; and how large they might be.  The intention is that
>> the products sizes would be significantly reduced using PNG
>> compression.  Some experiments that Steve Chiswell of the UPC ran
>> indicated that compression of imagery down to 30-40% of their
>> uncompressed sizes is possible (IR compresses better than VIS as you
>> might expect).  The other thing about PNG format is that it is a
>> "standard" image format handled by web browsers.  All that would have
>> to be done to display the imagery in a page would be to strip the
>> header information from the beginning of the image (only the image
>> lines will be PNG compressed).
>>
>> >Are you only interested in GOES or other satellites too? Meteosat and
>> >GMS would be easily enough to come up with but POES might be more
>> >difficult, but possible.
>>
>> If you could include METEOSAT and GMS I would be grateful; GOES data is
>> of primary interest.  POES would be nice, but if it is too big a deal,
>> then let's skip it for now.
>>
>> >You can check the schedules online at the Data Center web page,
>> >
>> >http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/datacenter/
>> >Go to Archive and then Satellite
>> >
>> >and click on the little GOES Schedule.  Basically the US is covered
>> >every 15 minutes routinely.
>>
>> Thanks.  This was the sort of information I had in mind for the temporal
>> resolution of products.  I can condense it into a tabular format that
>> is a little easier to digest.
>>
>> As a heads up, I want to let you know that at some point in the future,
>> I will be wanting to discuss with someone there (you and/or Santek) the
>> possibility of providing ADDE access to the Unidata-Wisconsin
>> datastream archives.  The development that Dave is having done with
>> respect to access to McIDAS data files not named with McIDAS
>> conventions should allow an ADDE server to easily serve the archived
>> data files.  Expansion of the work being done into areas that support
>> dynamic datasets would (like is supported by my ADDE subservers) make
>> the access trivial.
>>
>> At the same time, and if ADDE access to the archived data is possible,
>> I will want to include the new, extra imagery to be added to the
>> Unidata-Wisconsin datastream in the list of data that can be accessed
>> by ADDE.  This kind of access should help promote the use of McIDAS
>> (and our developing MetApps applications) throughout our community.  It
>> will also make it easier for small sites that can't handle running a
>> full blown IDD installation to get some of the data they need (access
>> to current and historic MDXX data would also be very useful, but that
>> is not my primary concern at the moment).

>--
>Dee Wade
>McIDAS User Services and SSEC Data Center
>Space Science and Engineering Center
>University of Wisconsin-Madison           Email:     address@hidden
>1225 West Dayton Street                   Voice:     (608) 263-0527
>Madison, WI  53706                        Fax:       (608) 263-6738

Tom