Integrating Live Access Server into Google Earth
Jing Yang Li 1, Roland
Schweitzer 2, Steve Hankin 3, Kevin
O'Brien 4
1Macrostaff, Inc., 11711
SE 8th St, Bellevue, WA 98005, United States
2Weathertop Consulting, LLC, 2802 Cinarron Ct., College Station,
TX 77845, United States
3NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point
Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105, United States
4JISAO/University of Washington, Box 354235 University of
Washington , Seattle, WA 98195, United States
The Live Access Server (LAS) is a highly configurable Web server designed to provide flexible access to visualization and analysis products generated from geo-referenced scientific data sets. Now at version 7.0, LAS has been in operation since 1994. The current ~{!0~}Armstrong?release of LAS V7 consists of a set of modular components in a three tiered architecture -- user interface, workflow orchestration and services to access data and generate scientific products. The LAS user interface (UI) helps the user make requests, preventing requests that are impossible or unreasonable. The UI communicates with the LAS Product Server (LPS the workflow orchestration component) via an XML string with an HTTP GET. When a request is received by the LPS, business logic converts this request into a series of Web Service requests invoked via SOAP. The SOAP services perform data access and generate products (visualizations, data subsets, analyses, etc.). LPS packages these outputs into final products via Jakarta Velocity templates for delivery to the end user. Back-end services are most often a legacy application wrapped in a Java class. The Java wrapper classes are deployed as Web Services accessible via SOAP using the AxisServlet and a custom Web Services Deployment Descriptor file.
Ferret is the default visualization application used by LAS, though other applications (e.g. Matlab, CDAT, and GrADS) can also be used. This application demonstrates how Keyhole Markup Language (KML) can be used to provide simple integration of LAS and Google Earth. KML makes access to "Virtual Globe" capabilities so simple that it can be added as an option to existing systems. This application is one such example. The ability to package an image in KML was added to the LAS as a new SOAP service. On the LAS user interface, users can select a Google Earth product in the same manner that any other LAS product is requested. The server will dynamically generate a KML file, which contains the 2D plot requested by the user. Then, the plot can be viewed in the Google Earth desktop application.