RAMADDA

Status Report: October, 2011

Julien Chastang, Yuan Ho

Strategic Focus Areas

The RAMADDA group's work supports the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:

  1. Broadening participation and expanding community services
    RAMADDA enables our earth science community partners to distribute geosciences data and metadata through web-based technologies thereby fostering scientific collaborations.
  2. Advancing data services
    RAMADDA provides the geosciences public a mechanism to share and leverage earth science data. This feature is visible through user-end, web-based distribution and consumption of data as well programmatic access via RAMADDA APIs.
  3. Developing and deploying useful tools
    RAMADDA assists in the development and deployment of useful tools by providing applications, such as the IDV, the capability to share and obtain geosciences data in a client/server fashion. Moreover, RAMADDA is a software platform that can be extended and built upon. RAMADDA plugins can provide enhancements to RAMADDA functionality. The RAMADDA IDV plugin, for example, enables web-based visualization of gridded data.
  4. Enhancing user support services
    Unidata's RAMADDA installation enables the IDV team to communicate more effectively to our users concerning their issues. Specifically, during support ticket conversations, the IDV team requests that users upload pertinent data to RAMADDA for analysis. The IDV team also uses RAMADDA to share instructional screencasts with users.
  5. Providing leadership in cyberinfrastructure
    RAMADDA is a web-based content management system specifically tailored for geoscientists. As such, RAMADDA provides the community unique capabilities that are not available elsewhere in the earth science arena.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

The open source community continues to maintain RAMADDA on SourceForge by adding new features and addressing bug fixes. Significantly, RAMADDA version 1.3 was released in September. This version includes:

  • Google Earth plugin integration and improved maps
  • NLAS/RAMADDA LiDAR data services
  • Lots of bug fixes and documentation enhancements
  • New and improved Wiki facilities
  • Amelioration of page styles
  • Improved plugin architecture
    • Ontology
    • FAQ
    • Glossary

Planned Activities

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue administering RAMADDA, provide community assistance and training, and collaborate with Jeff Mcwhirter, RAMADDA lead developer.

Relevant Metrics

RAMADDA download statistics are available at the RAMADDA SourceForge Site.