WEB-IS (Integrated System): An Overall View

Researchers in the geosciences are being faced with a deluge of large-scale datasets that needs to be analyzed in a fast and efficient manner. We have developed an interactive web-based scheme for data-mining large datasets using three distinct techniques. Collectively WEB-IS (Web-Based Integrated System) is a webservice based on a client-server paradigm which employs the power of a server to provide visualization and data analysis capabilities to multiple clients remotely. WEB-IS1 (http://boy.msi.umn.edu/web-is) extracts multi-resolutional structures in seismic catalogs through cluster analysis. Off-screen rendering is then applied on the server which allows the client to view the results in 3-D. WEB-IS2 (http://boy.msi.umn.edu/amira) exploits the ease of use in the powerful visualization package Amira (www.amiravis.com) through a web-based module which allows for manipulating and analyzing 3-D datasets. WEB-IS3 (http://tomo.msi.umn.edu/~max) is an imaging service which displays selected features from a low resolution environment to one with increased resolution by zooming into the data. Our software uses a combination of programming languages to seamlessly integrate server-side processing with client-side interaction utilities. Fast two-way communication between client and server will be considered for GRID purposes using SOAP (Livingston, D., Advanced SOAP for Web development, Prentice Hall, 2002). Future use of WEB-IS in the GRID computing environment is also being explored using the Narada-Brokering (www.naradabrokering.org) method. Our aim with this software tool is to overcome the hardware limitations of a thin client by harnessing the power of a large visualization server using a simple web interface.