SolarSoft http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/
S.L.Freeland, freeland@sxt1.lmsal.com, Last Revision: 14-October-1999
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What is SolarSoft?
The SolarSoft system is a set of integrated software libraries, data bases,
and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis
environment for Solar Physics. The SolarSoftWare (SSW) system is built
from Yohkoh, SOHO, SDAC and Astronomy libraries and draws upon contributions
from many members of those projects. It is primarily an
IDL based
system, although some instrument teams integrate executables
written in other languages.
The SSW environment provides a consistent look and
feel at widely distributed co-investigator institutions to facilitate data
exchange and to stimulate coordinated analysis.
Commonalities and overlap in solar data and analysis goals are exploited
to permit application of fundamental utilities to the data from many
different solar instruments. The use of common libraries, utilities,
techniques and interfaces minimzies the learning curve for investigators
who are analyzing new solar data sets, correlating results from multiple
experiments or performing research away from their home institution.
Some of the primary goals of the SSW are...
- Provide a large reuse SW library
- The software library represents an evolutionary system
tracing back to SMM, through Yohkoh and SOHO, TRACE, and eventually will
incorporate SXI, HESSI, and other solar observatories.
Many common "solar physics" , file i/o, system, IDL structure
manipulation, data display, etc. tasks have already been addressed
by others (many others in some cases!)
Very small sample of existing SSW capabilities...
- Time series analysis, time conversions, UTPLOT (millennium safe)
- Spectral fitting
- Image and Image cube (movies) display
- IDL data manipulation (structure, string, array, mathematics...)
- File I/O (generic binary, ascii), FITS
- Solar (limb fitting, grid overlay, coordinate tranformations...)
- WWW related (html conversion, file conversions, FORM handling,
movie making,...)
- WWW Client<->SolarSoft IDL server interface
permits execution of SSW/IDL utilities over the Web
Examples include
SXT dynamic WWW movie maker and
WWW GOES X-Ray light curve display
WWW index which allows searching for SSW routines by category
and/or string pattern is available.
- Provide a system which is largely hardware-system and site
independent
- Installation and setup utilities simplify tranportation to systems.
Fundamental shared software is written in hardware-independent and
site-configuration independent form. The SSW setup utilities support
local configuration files to get sites up and running
- Promote the use of certain standards which facilitate coordinated
data analysis
- Through use of suggested standards, many powerful routines are
immediately available for the analysis of new data sets.
The
SSWsuggested Keywords and Tags
descibes pointing and time standards.
Application for
overlay, alignment, scaling, rotation, etc of any SSW instruments
via Dominic Zarro's Mapping software
- Promote an evolutionary environment
- Feedback and contributions from the many SSW institutes and users
are strongly encouraged. Utilties to simplify remote
SSW upgrades
and accept user contribution are designed to make the system
evolutionary instead of stagnant and divergent.
- Provide access to supporting ancillary data bases
- Access to supporting data sets from ground-based and satellite-based
solar observatories are provided in consistent formats to facilitate
coordinated analysis
- Provide a file-format independent analysis environment
- To accomodate the largest number of solar data sets,
file I/O is isolated and analysis applications are designed to operate
on objects which are independent of file type.
- Provide integrated access to other IDL packages
- When IDL libraries are identified which provide a useful extension to
SSW capabilities, we will attempt to integrate them into the SSW system.
For example, the
Chianti Package, K. Dere et al.
is now fully integrated into the SSW distribution and analysis environment
for UV/EUV emission line analysis.
A "typical" SSW installation is looks something like...
SSW
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | |
SITE GEN SOHO YOHKOH (...missions...) (...packages...)
(SSW) | |
-------------------- ------------------
| | | | | | | | | |
GEN EIT LASCO CDS [etc] GEN SXT BCS HXT WBS
(soho) (yohkoh)
The "GEN" branches contain general purpose (IDL, setup) which are applicable to
branches below - thus the SSW-GEN contains globally useful routines
(instrument/mission independent) and the MISSION-GEN contain routines which
are mission dependent but may be used by all instruments within the mission
(mission pointing, epehermeris, etc). The SITE directory is available
for local SW and definition of SSW environmentals/logicals in terms of
local pathnames.
The SSW installation procedure and system design allows local configurations
which contain a subset of this tree - thus, an EIT/SXT/Chianti
only installation is ok
and would look like...
SSW
|
-------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
SITE GEN SOHO YOHKOH PACKAGES
| | |
---- ---- Chianti
| | | |
GEN EIT GEN SXT
SSW setup startup utilities define the IDL environment based upon users
SSW instrument selection. (not shown are links to Astronomy and other
IDL libraries which are added by the SSW startup)
freeland@penumbra.nascom.nasa.gov