Earth Observing System (EOS) Clearinghouse: A Framework for Sharing Community Data, Services and Tools

The Earth Observing System ClearingHOuse (ECHO) is an enabling framework that allows different data systems and services to work together therefore allowing communities to share tools, services and data. An open system, ECHO's application program interfaces (APIs) are published for use by the user community. The idea is to extend available Earth science resources from the science community, to the science community. ECHO accomplishes this through a metadata clearinghouse and service broker application program interfaces (APIs) based on XML and web service technologies. ECHO is being developed and released in increments to allow for insight and feedback during the development process. As a metadata clearinghouse, it supports iterative query data access and a newer data access paradigm called navigation/discovery, that serves to eliminate zero-hit and mega-hit results sets. As a service broker, ECHO decentralizes tools for manipulating data and supports interoperability of distributed functions. A well documented, message based interface is provided instead of an integrated web server. This approach allows various providers to build their own user interfaces so they are not limited by any single integrated data search and order system. This new approach is consistent with the trend toward a federated community.