RAMADDA
Status Report: March, 2012
Julien Chastang
Strategic Focus Areas
RAMADDA supports the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:
- Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data
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. - Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data
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 provide enhancements to RAMADDA functionality. The RAMADDA IDV plugin, for example, enables web-based visualization of gridded data. - Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use
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. In addition, 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 takes advantage of RAMADDA to share instructional screencasts with users. - Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community
RAMADDA enables our earth science community partners to distribute geosciences data and metadata through web-based technologies thereby fostering scientific collaborations.
Activities Since the Last Status Report
The open source community continues to maintain RAMADDA on SourceForge by adding new features and addressing bug fixes. There have been no major RAMADDA releases since the last status report. However, there has been ongoing software development. In particular, the RAMADDA team improved back-end infrastructure to better communicate with the relational database. In addition, to support the UCAR Africa Initiative, the RAMADDA team enhanced the IDV visualization capability available within RAMADDA specifically in the area of time series charts. This effort contributed to meningitis research as part of this initiative. Going forward, Unidata plans to transfer RAMADDA technology to our collaborators at the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development in Niamey, Niger.
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.