Design of a Distributed Planetary Image Data Archive Based on an ATM Network

On-going and finished planetary and Earth satellite missions have spawned large image data archives distributed all over the world. The searching for specific data suffers from lack of using international query and catalogue standards, slow network connections, no graphical user interface (GUI) and no platform independent client software. The proposed GDSS (Graz Distributed Server System) project outlines the system design, the setup of a high-speed ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) backbone and the implementation of a prototype. The GDSS prototype is using Java and JDBC (Java Data Base Connectivity) in order to access any ANSI SQL compatible relational database system with the same set of SQL statements. The client software provides the user with remote access for searching and retrieving image data. The 500 GByte NASA Magellan data set from planet Venus was used as a first test dataset. However, the system is not restricted to the given dataset. We expect data management concepts, n..