DATALAB

In addition to the access to GNSS data, the GSSC provides also access to Datalabs. The concept of Datalab is very simple. In an age of bigger and bigger datasets, it becomes unfeasible to transfer datasets of many hundreds (or more!) of GBytes across a network to the user’s computer where a processing application resides. In this case the solution is to move the application to where the data is. A datalab is nothing but an application that runs in close connection with a data repository in such a way that instead of moving data to the application, the application itself is moved to the repository. This concept is a simple but powerful one when one takes into account a large number of applications can can be transformed into a datalab.

All this requires a careful management of resources in the host but nothing that cannot be handled with modern technology. For special cases where users required unusually large resrouces (be it either CPU or CPU tieme, memory or disk space) it should be possible to provide these temporarily to users as long as their requests are well justified.

Although still in the beta stage, the GSSC already has quite a few Datalabs available, from simple applications to visualise RINEX files, to complex applications like gLab, a RINEX file processing application used frequently in learning contexts, or even full fledged programming languages such as Octave (a scripting language which works pretty well as a Matlab replacement in some contexts), Jupyter, or even python.

One of the few limitations on making a piece of software a datalab is the license under which the software is released. For obvious reasons commercial software cannot the provided as a datalab. Apart from that there are few limitations to transforming a standalone piece of Software into a Datalab.

In the near future, it is foreseen users of the GSSC will be able to install and share their own datalabs with collaborators either in a school or University project or for complex research. For especially important datalabs that could be useful the community at large, it should be possible to give them specially enhanced visibility so that the community can benefit from them. Of course this can only be done with the permission of the authors of the application.

It is also possible for users get their own datalabs installed in the GSSC. In order to do so, they should contact GSSC Support stating their use case and they will be guided through the process.