Refining query previews techniques for data with multivalued attributes: the case of NASA EOSDIS

Query Previews allow users to rapidly gain an understanding of the content and scope of a digital data collection. These previews present overviews of abstracted metadata, enabling users to rapidly and dynamically avoid undesired data. We present our recent work on developing query previews for a variety of NASA EOSDIS situations. We focus on approaches that successfully address the challenge of multi-valued attribute data. Memory requirements and processing time associated with running these new solutions remain independent of the number of records in the dataset. We describe two techniques and their respective prototypes used to preview NASA Earth science data.