[RFC 004] Operation Review Comment 18

We have been using OpenDAP (formerly DODS) at COLA
quite a bit the last few years.

To learn more about COLA, please see
http://www.iges.org/aboutcola.html

We have integrated OpenDAP into our overall data
workflow by integrating it into the GrADS
software package, which has been our primary
data analysis and display tool since the
early 1990s:
http://www.iges.org/grads/grads.html

GrADS running as a client uses the OpenDAP
enabled version of the netCDF library. This allows
GrADS to access data sets on most OpenDAP servers.

We have also implemented a server that combines
the capabilities of OpenDAP and GrADS. It is
called the GDS -- GrADS Data Server. See:
http://www.iges.org/grads/gds/gds.html

See also the paper:
http://grads.iges.org/grads/gds/joew.AMS.2001.pdf

We do a lot of computing at NCAR, and we run a GDS
server there on dataportal. When scientists complete
a model run, they put there data on dataportal, and
then interactively analyse and visualize the data
from their desktop.

We also distribute data sets of interest freely to
the community via cola8.iges.org and monsoondata.org.
You can view the usage stats for these servers
online at:
http://www.iges.org/stats/gds/

We also run the GDS on all of our internal disk systems.
It allows data access and analysis in parallel with NFS.
It forms the core of our data management system
at COLA, allowing us to manage not only the data
holdings of COLA but also the metadata:
http://www.iges.org/about_greta.html

Please let me know if you have any further
questions....