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