Hera: Building a Web-Based Analysis Environment at the HEASARC

We are developing protocols which will allow full scientific data analysis to be performed within suitably configured Web browsers. Currently, although the Web is critical to both the data discovery and publishing aspects of the scientific enterprise, it is used far more sparingly in the gritty details of data analysis. The data analysis environment does not share the advantages of immediate access to new resources, quick and convenient downloads, and the support from commercial vendors that data distribution currently enjoys. We believe we can extend existing protocols to provide a complete analysis environment that users will access through their Web browsers. We will implement these protocols within the HEASARC's FTOOLS and XANADU analysis environments to provide a fully functional system to users. We anticipate these protocols would be extensible to other software environments.