cc: DAARWG.NCDC@noaa.gov, Tom Adang <Tom.Adang@noaa.gov>, Rick.Vizbulis@noaa.gov
date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:26:22 -0500
from: "Bruce A. Wielicki" <b.a.wielicki@nasa.gov>
subject: Re: Teleconference summary
to: Ferris Webster <ferris@cms.udel.edu>

   Ferris et al:

   Sorry I missed this telecon but I read through the minutes.  I agree with the summary but
   with one serious concern: the document attached summarized:

   At the moment, CLASS is still focused on large arrays. It must evolve into an enterprise
   solution. To achieve that, an enterprise statement of requirements must be developed,
   rather than simply organizational statements of requirements.

   Since the original motivation or CLASS was making NOAA able to handle new large data
   storage commitments like NPOESS, I am puzzled on why CLASS should be expanded to an
   enterprise solution for all NOAA data sets.  We clearly saw that the diversity of NOAA
   types of data is shockingly diverse.  Developing a one-size-fits-all "enterprise" solution
   seems like the wrong way to go.  It is likely to be very expensive, very complex, very
   inflexible, and will please no one.

   Since the original congressional logic was dealing with new large data volumes: it seems to
   me that the focus of CLASS on large data sets makes perfect sense.  As the "Death March"
   book reminds us: 80% of the functionality comes from 20% of the requirements.  Pick the big
   new problem (NPOESS) and do it right.  It won't be well suited to fish guts data or to
   individual surface site temperature records: and thats a GOOD thing.

   From the outside it looks like CLASS is way underfunded in NOAA to even do that one thing:
   large satellite data sets.  If that was the original motivation, and that is the tallest
   pole, and funding is very tight: there are only two things to do: spend all the money on a
   glorious architecture that will never be built (death march), or triage the requirements
   down to the really critical thing that must be done.  If CLASS is successful, build on and
   extend it.  I think congress is leading noaa down the death march path of requiring way to
   much for way too little time or resources.  For any of you that have not read this book: I
   highly recommend it (an easy find on amazon and a used paperback copy is cheap).  Lots of
   that rare common sense stuff.  After living through EOS, EOSDIS, and CERES with ~ a million
   lines of code, I can confirm his conclusions.

   Given that CLASS is trying first to do new large NPOESS satellite data sets: I'm rather
   shocked

   to hear nothing about using lessons learned from the NASA EOS satellite system which is
   flying instruments with very similar data rates, volumes, data products, and users (from
   science to commercial).  The Terra mission alone in 2006 delivered about 12 million data
   files to 25,000 unique users.  The CERES data products on Terra alone in 2006 shipped out
   40,000 Gbytes of data products to users.

   The IPCC policymaker summary has just come out.  The full report is later this spring.  The
   NRC Decadal Study has just come out.  Climate change and the global data sets needed to
   support it are going to increase in importance.  This panel should be comfortable that
   CLASS will be ready to catch the huge ball called NPOESS and be able to serve it up in nice
   sized chunks to the user community.  This should be priority 1 for this panel to verify as
   something on track.  I don't see it yet.  I'm hoping I just missed it because I missed the
   telecon.  Is that it?

   cheers

   bruce

   At 3:58 PM -0500 2/14/07, Ferris Webster wrote:

     Dear colleagues,



     Attached is a summary of this week's DAARWG teleconference. If any of you who attended
     feel that I have missed something or have misinterpreted your statements, please let me
     know and I will modify it.



     DAARWG members, please note that the document sent out on Monday, the GEO-IDE Concept of
     Operations, is a key document, that summarizes the approach being taken. It should have
     been circulated earlier, but there was (understandable) confusion about which documents
     to send us. I urge you to take a look at it.



     Regards,



     Ferris Webster

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   --
   Bruce A. Wielicki
   Mail Stop 420
   NASA Langley Research Center
   Hampton, VA  23681-2199
   Phone:    (757) 864-5683
   FAX:      (757) 864-7996
