EDG to WIST Transition
by Andy Mitchell, Echo Operations, ESDIS
As part of the Earth Observing System (EOS) evolution initiative, the remaining installations of the EOS Data Gateway (EDG) client used by EOS Data Centers will be decommissioned this year and will be replaced by the Warehouse Inventory Search Tool, or WIST, created by the EOSDIS Clearing HOuse (ECHO) team. There are currently five active EDG sites: 1) ASF, 2) GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center), 3) LaRC (Langley Research Center), 4) LPDAAC (Land Processes DAAC), and 5) NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center). Users may use any EDG instance to search for and order data; however, it is assumed that very few EDG users perform orders that include data from more than one Data Center. During this transition, EDG users will have an opportunity to migrate their user accounts to WIST.
User migration from EDG to WIST will occur in phases, by Data Center, beginning with Data Centers with smaller numbers of customers using the EDG as their search and order tool. In order to take advantage of ECHO performance and user-profile enhancements, the migration of each Data Center’s users from the EDG client to the WIST client will begin after ECHO 10 /WIST 10 is released in April 2008 and after each Data Center has both exported and reconciled its data holdings in ECHO. This controlled phasing allows ECHO and WIST performance to be measured and tuned, and allows ECHO to respond to usability feedback after each phase.
User-account migration will be handled via a self-service tool that will be available on each EDG instance once the migration phase begins. This tool will automatically copy a user’s EDG profile into WIST and will allow the user to verify or correct their account information. The user will also be prompted to choose a new password, using WIST/ECHO password rules. Due to the difficulty in transitioning and the infrequency of usage, users will lose saved EDG searches and results when they migrate to WIST.
A schedule, by Data-Center, will be published to notify users when their data access through the EDG clients will be removed. Current EDG users will need to create their WIST accounts and, hopefully, become familiar with using the WIST client before access is removed from the EDG. Ample time will be provided for users to perform this migration. Users also have the option of using the Data-Center specific search and order tool, which for ASF is the URSA interface.
Because EDG users typically register at a single EDG instance, are not automatically registered at all EDG instances, and are not required to register at a particular Data-Center, the EDG clients will continue to be operational until each Data Center has removed access to their data from the EDG. The EDG clients will be disabled once the users are migrated to ECHO/WIST and the data access has been removed from the EDG. Data-Center acceptance criteria for this transition will be based on WIST functionality and response time, ECHO ingest and search/order performance, ECHO data-holdings integrity, user-profile migration completion, and user satisfaction.
If you have questions or concerns about this transition or about data access, please contact the ASF User Services Office at uso@asf.alaska.edu, 907-474-6166.
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