IVADO: an oceanographic data analysis and visualization tool based on ION/IDL and Java using netCDF interface

An oceanographic data analysis and visualization tool has been developed in Java and IDL languages using ION (IDL on the Net) interface. This third stage of the project, has focused in building a system, as independent as possible of both the hardware and the operating system, and more easily to customize and reuse. To deal with a certain degree of uniformization in technologies used, Java language has been adopted to handle all client-server interactions, build the graphic user interface, manage the interaction with database and convert from raw to netCDF data format using the PMEL-EPIC conventions for the variables. Further, using Java and ION, it can reuse most of the IDL processing and graphic routines written years ago. Scalability has been addressed building a metadata database, managed with PostgreSQL DBMS, to store all the contextual information. The authors describe the structure of this system applied to a simulated example of an oceanographic survey. The system uses several Java properties files that facilitates customization even to port to other LAN environments. This last facility, is very appreciated, since after an oceanographic survey has finished, it is possible to easily transfer all the system and associated data and go ahead with the work.