OPeNDAP at American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2023

OPeNDAP had a big presence at this year’s American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2023 meeting. Chris Battisto from NASA led a poster presentation about OPeNDAP in the cloud. Dave Fulker, Board chair of OPeNDAP, gave an oral presentation about the importance of developing social structures to support technologies like OPeNDAP. Best of all, we hosted an OPeNDAP booth where we got to talk to lots of people about what kind of work they do and help them learn more about using OPeNDAP. 

Here are more details about our activities: 

Poster presentation

Title: “Using OPeNDAP In The Cloud to Connect NASA Data Centers and Support Open Data Access” (IN13D-0603). 

• Presented by Chris Battisto
• Time: Monday, 11 Dec 2023 at 2:10 – 6:30 PM PT

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1347020

The poster can be found here: https://zenodo.org/records/10713256

Oral presentation

Title: “Cyber technology is not enough: Social structures to foster data-rich, discipline-liminal discourse among humans and machines” (IN22A-03)

• Presented by Dave Fulker on behalf of co-authors Arika Virapongse and James Gallagher. 
• Time: Tuesday, Dec 12, 10:40-10:50 AM PT 

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1299674

This presentation was about how OPeNDAP has been introducing Commons theory into their community engagement approach. The idea that open source software is a part of our shared data ecosystem—that potentially offers benefits to all—is a strong argument for shifting the way we think about making decisions around access to and management of public-serving data.

The slide deck can be found here: https://zenodo.org/records/10713292

OPeNDAP Booth

We are at AGU every year giving talks and participating in activities, but it’s been years since we’ve had a booth. We also had an opportunity to survey the people who stopped by the booth, learning about if they use OPeNDAP, what kind of work they do, what kind of data they use, and some demographics about who they are. We collected data from 127 people, and we learned important things like: 

• OPeNDAP has a big impact in under-resourced countries and small academic/research institutes
• OPeNDAP is most often used in oceanography and in the broader earth sciences, but there are opportunities for it to be used more in other disciplines like ecology. 
• People love and appreciate OPeNDAP–this one is a big pat on the back for ourselves!

Our booth was right across from the Open Science pavilion, which was great for being in the center for things. We posted a daily schedule of presentations and workshops that were aimed at helping introduce new users to OPeNDAP and giving new and intermediate users some hands-on experience using OPeNDAP. Our booth hosts were: James Gallagher, Dave Fulker, and Arika Virapongse. The booth was held from Monday, Dec 11 at 3 PM to Thursday, Dec 14 at 1 PM PT. 

We also had some great swag to give away: 

Here are details of scheduled events that we hosted at the booth: 

Presentation: Introduction to OPeNDAP

• Facilitator: Dave Fulker
• Best for: People who are new to OPeNDAP

Abstract: 

OPeNDAP is a technology that data users, such as Earth Science researchers, use to immediately access data within applications that they already have, such as Jupyter notebooks, Matlab and many programs that can read netCDF files. In the fields of oceanography and atmospheric science, OPeNDAP has already helped the research community make significant progress overcoming the challenge of access and subsetting the large number of datasets now online. This is especially true for data hosted by NASA, which has over 3,000 collections accessible using OPeNDAP. In this presentation, we will provide a background about OPeNDAP and describe how OPeNDAP can best help you to access the data you need. 

Workshop 1: Authentication with NASA’s Earthdata system

• Facilitator: James Gallagher
• Best for: People who would like to use OPeNDAP to access NASA’s Earthdata system

Abstract: 

Some data providers, most notably NASA, require data access requests to be authenticated. To do this, you’ll need to have a user account with the institution. Any software client application working on your behalf (browser, cURL, etc) must be provided with user credentials or tokens either through dynamic user interaction or configuration. In this workshop, we will specifically help you obtain authentication for NASA’s Earthdata system. By completing this authentication process, you will be able to access data using OPeNDAP and also fully participate in our other workshops at the booth (workshops 2 & 3). 

Workshop 2: Learning to use OPeNDAP: A hands-on workshop for beginners

• Facilitator: James Gallagher
• Best for: People who would like to gain basic proficiency using OPeNDAP 

Abstract:

In this workshop, OPeNDAP will showcase tutorials for data users that demonstrate how to access and use data from OPeNDAP servers. This workshop will focus on data served by NASA and include datasets now available only in the NASA cloud-based data system. However, the workshop will not be exclusively about NASA or cloud-based data. The tutorials will show ways to use OPeNDAP servers that apply in the broadest sense, in most cases to all OPeNDAP servers. We will guide participants through a hands-on tutorial using Jupyter notebooks. Participants can either follow along on the screen as we demonstrate how OPeNDAP works, or they can use their own laptop computer to practice using OPeNDAP to access data. Participants will not need to know Python, although that will be a plus. For participants that would like to practice using OPeNDAP on their own computer, they will not need to install any software, but they will need to have a computer that can run a web browser and will need to first gain authentication via NASA EarthData (can also attend Workshop 1 for help doing this). 

Workshop 3: Using xarray with OPeNDAP: A hands-on workshop for intermediate users

• Facilitator: James Gallagher
• Best for: People who would like to gain more proficiency using OPeNDAP

Abstract: 

In this workshop, we will guide you through an example of how to use Xarray with the NetCDF Python interface and DAP4. Through this process, we will pull data from remote DAP4 servers into your Python program’s memory space so that the data may be analyzed and displayed. Participants can either follow along on the screen as we demonstrate how OPeNDAP works, or they can use their own laptop computer to practice using OPeNDAP to access data. For participants that would like to practice using OPeNDAP on their own computer, they will not need to install any software, but they will need to have a computer that can run a web browser and will need to first gain authentication via NASA EarthData (can also attend Workshop 1 for help doing this). 

Special guest presentation: Using OPeNDAP In The Cloud to Connect NASA Data Centers and Support Open Data Access

• Facilitator: Chris Battisto from NASA
• Best for: Anyone interested in learning about OPeNDAP and its connection to NASA DAACs (Distributed Active Archive Centers)

Abstract: 

NASA DAACs (Distributed Active Archive Centers) have been historically geographically dispersed and isolated from each other, including regarding the scopes of their missions. NASA DAACs are currently transitioning from on-premises servers to a shared cloud in order to build more interoperability, cross-collaboration, and streamlined services between their data centers. OPeNDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol) in the cloud is a critical component of making this interconnectedness between NASA DAACs possible. The OPeNDAP nonprofit is collaborating with NASA DAACs to enable OPeNDAP in the cloud, allowing free data access and open-source subsetting capabilities over thousands of NASA collections to the public. To improve their cloud services, OPeNDAP seeks to collaborate with developers from governmental agencies and private industry to collect user feedback, create use cases, and develop resources to enable real-time learning for users. This presentation will give an overview of the OPeNDAP in the cloud, resources developed to access this service in collaboration with NASA DAACs, lessons learned from previous user engagement, and considerations for improved user guidance and experience to further support NASA’s commitment to the Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI).