Services

Web Services Architecture, Design, and Implementation

ASA has developed several operational Web Services in Service Oriented Architectures that share data with remote users and applications. As an example, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue group use a data server with a Web Services interface developed by ASA to provide environmental data to the Search and Rescue Operational Planning System (SAROPS). The SAROPS software application was developed by ASA in collaboration with Northrup Grumman and Metron and is the world standard for search and rescue planning.

The environmental data server (EDS) component of the software system, the data backbone, was developed solely by ASA and is a fully automated system that continually collects, validates and serves data.

ASA’s data management experience is founded on the concepts of interoperability and adherence to standards to allow the broadest applications possible. Web Services have allowed ASA to bring standardized data delivery to a wider user base.

Some of the needs met by ASA’s Web Services are:

• Management of real-time and archived data
• Data integration within GIS
• Distribution and collection by applications and data systems
• Providing data to monitoring and forecast systems
• Driving model-based hindcasting, nowcasting and forecasting

ASA builds and designs systems that use a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA provides an efficient way to manage disparate data and make it accessible to all levels of stakeholders. At the center of the SOA design are web services. Web services are maintained by a server and used by various client applications such as web browsers or desktop GIS applications to access data or perform an analysis or operation on the data. The figure below shows different clients in the top tier requesting data and other services from the server. These clients may be a web browser, a GIS desktop application or specialized applications.

The advantage of this approach is that it allows additional services such as data display and analysis of observation data to be “layered” on top of existing GIS systems such as MORIS that support WMS. ASA has built custom OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Web services (WMS and WFS) that directly access custom ocean observing formats and relational databases and allow integration with commercial and open-source map servers. ASA has also implemented the time specification in the OGC standards so that time-varying data can efficiently be handled in a GIS environment.

Example COASTMAP Web-Client screen showing forecast hydrodynamic model results, forecast model wind field, and NexRad radar output for Mid-Atlantic Coast.