Applying a toolkit for dissemination and analysis of near real-time data through the World Wide Web: integration of the Antelope Real Time System, ROADNet, and PHP

Newman, R., K.G. Lindquist, F.L. Vernon, T. Hansen, S. Foley, J. Eakins, J. Orcutt

The ROADNet project has enabled the acquisition and storage of diverse data streams through seamless integration of the Antelope Real Time System (ARTS) with (for example) ecological, seismological and geodetic instrumentation. The robust system architecture allows researchers to simply network data loggers with relational databases; however, the ability to disseminate these data to policy makers, scientists and the general public has (until recently) been provided on an 'as needed' basis.

The recent development of a Datascope interface to the popular open source scripting language PHP has provided an avenue for presenting near real time data (such as integers, images and movies) from within the ARTS framework easily on the World Wide Web. The interface also indirectly provided the means to transform data types into various formats using the extensive function libraries that accompany a PHP installation (such as image creation and manipulation, data encryption for sensitive information, and XML creation for structured document interchange through the World Wide Web).

Using a combination of Datascope and PHP library functions, an extensible tool-kit is being developed to allow data managers to easily present their products on the World Wide Web. The tool-kit has been modeled after the pre-existing ARTS architecture to simplify the installation, development and ease-of-use for both the seasoned researcher and the casual user.

The methodology and results of building the applications that comprise the tool-kit are the focus of this presentation, including procedural vs. object oriented design, incorporation of the tool-kit into the existing contributed software libraries, and case-studies of researchers who are employing the tools to present their data.