DataShop and HelioLib - a Service and a Library for Uniform Access to Heliophysics Data

We present a data access mechanism designed to help scientists with the task of obtaining usable data - uniformly formatted science products that are easy to compare with other datasets and easy to ingest into personal analysis processes. We focus on distributed time-series space physics datasets (energetic particle data, plasma data, magnetic field data, etc.). Our tool, DataShop, simplifies the data gathering process, hiding all non-scientific details such as physical location of the data, file naming conventions, file format, and parameter layout within the files. Each dataset read by our tool is captured into a semantic data model capable of properly interpreting different science units, coordinate systems and internal arrangements. From this internal data model, semantically uniform output can be dumped. Currently, output to ASCII is supported, and other output formats are planned. By reducing the amount of time spent on data interpretation and rearranging, our tool makes multi-dataset analysis easier. Key features include a single request interface for multiple datasets, the ability to download data over arbitrary time ranges (independent of file sizes of the data sources), and the ability to combine two or more datasets (or user-selectable parameters from within those datasets) into a custom download product. We are incorporating our download mechanism into several Heliophysics VxOs as a value-added service. Within our tool is a library of read routines for accessing multiple datasets which we are calling HelioLib. Our eventual plan is to make this library available as a universal reader mechanism for Heliophysics time-series data. Progress and future plans for the data access mechanism and the library are presented.