Data Unification and Analysis Services for VxO"s

We present a prototype data unification mechanism for space physics data. The ultimate goal is to create a service that provides scientists with a simple yet scalable way to obtain immediately usable data from multiple, diverse, distributed data holdings. While emerging VxO's simplify the discovery of specific data products, the actual product files discovered are still in multiple formats and have widely varying layouts even with the same format. Thus when trying to make, for example, custom plots of data from different missions each of which uses a different format/layout, all the datasets must be first converted to a format and layout suitable for the researcher's own plotting tools, and this can be very time consuming and frustrating. Our service will read the data files from various online, remote locations and convert them into a standardized, internal representation. Once captured in a mission independent form, subsequent use of the data (display, analysis, output into other formats/layouts) can be completely ignorant of any dataset specific details. The prototype version of our service will be available as a set of IDL routines (i.e., a client side mechanism) that can be embedded into custom analysis programs, and eventually this functionality will be available through a REST style interface (i.e., a server side mechanism). The VxO's are an enabling piece of the unification process because VxOs provide uniform metadata that allows the creation of conversion routines to bring the data into a mission independent internal representation. Access to a sampling of magnetic field and plasma datasets available through the Virtual Heliophsyics Observatory (VHO) and the Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory (VMO) will be demonstrated.