fe user guide
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As the demand for robust and consistent scientific data distribution platforms increase, user interface (UI) design and implementation has become one of the more important tasks in the creation of any scientific data portal. Potential data consumers, and specifically end users of the ESGF portal, are inevitably concerned with the manner in which services (e.g. node management, search, etc) are presented. In general, end users highly value usability. An oft- studied, yet rarely perfected concept, usability requires careful consideration in designing interfaces that are easily navigable, flexible, and intuitive. Moreover, it is imperative to conceive a design amenable to the evolving architecture and services offered by ESGF. As a result, the ESGF P2P effort altered the construction of the current gateway to accommodate this changing infrastructure while maintaining optimal usability.
We present a handful of features as of the current release of the ESGF front- end (FE), among these features:
- Home page, which contains general information on the ESGF project, links to important resources as well as a quick search box.
- Search page, allowing users to conduct a number of operations including search, select, download and analization (through LAS integration when available)
- Administration page, where admins can add/edit group and user account information.
- Login & Registration page, this page allows you to login with openID or register as a new user.
The following common navigation bar is present on every page - as a short cut to quickly navigate to a particular function.
- Home - home page
- Search - full search page
- Login, this is the login and user registration page.
- Admin, administrator's page (only displayed when admins have logged in).
- Accounts, display of information about the user who is currently logged into the system.
The home page demonstrates basic overall information for the user and summarizes the overall feature set of the portal. Many elements of the page are customizable (institution logo, description, etc). It contains three main components, the search box, institution information, and resources section.
This is the quick search box present on the homepage, which allows users to do free text search. Upon clicking on search button, it will navigate to the full search page and present the search results.
Institutions may add descriptions about their activities in this section.
Various resources to external services are linked in this section. Links to other participating institutions are presented, including an rss subscribe option to obtain the latest published datasets.
The search page provides the user with a variety of search options. It is a unified, ajax-style interface, where all search services can be viewed and used in a single page.
- free text in the search box
- facets, selected through either facet browsing or facet navigation side bar
- geo-spatial constraints
- temporal constraints
- distributed search
Each result or record is presented with three primary block of information:
- Title of the dataset as well as a short description of the dataset. If the supplied description exceed 300 characters, there will be a "more" link at the end. Upon clicking on it, a full description shall be displayed.
- Metadata summary, which displays a summary of information about the dataset (when the dataset result is clicked).
- Action bar, where you can perform various actions to this particular dataset. Pending on the dataset and service availability behind it, the follow operations might be available:
- Add to Cart: select the dataset for further operations, and you can see the current selection through "data cart" tab. Noted that upon selection, the hyperlink is changed to "Remove from cart", which allow you to undo this operation if needed. You can accomplish the same (remove operation) while you navigate to the "data cart".
- Visualize and Analyze: display of the dataset in the LAS analytical software suite (opened in a separate tab).
Based on the the facets defined in the system, as you type in the serach box, the autocomplete feature will show you a list of the matching entries as well as the number of dataset within.
Whenever you make changes to the aforementioned search criterion, the current selection on the side bar will display a trail of it, that allow you fine tune the criteria: you can either remove one of them, or all of them. Noted that the search results page will be refreshed with the latest search results based on your selection.
Clicking on a search result will give a summary of metadata associated with the dataset.
- The bounding box search component allows a user to find datasets within a minimum bounding rectangle (MBR). The user is required to enter 2 (or 3) coordinates on the map (see Fig. 2) - either manually or by clicking on the map.
- All inclusive search (encloses)
- Partial inclusive search (overlaps)
- The centroid search component allows a user to find datasets within a bounding circle. The user is required to enter 1 coordinate on the map - either manually or by clicking on the map - as well as a radius defined in km (see Fig. 3).
- All inclusive search (encloses)
- Partial inclusive search (overlaps)
The ESGF P2P gateway may easily accomodate distributed searches across all nodes in the federation. The user need only click the "turn on distributed search" button and the search expands to include datasets from other institutions. For example, the figure below illustrates a simple local search, yielding 36 results with a wildcard search.
When the user clicks the Turn on Distributed Search button, the search results increase to 248. Note that projects from other institutions (such as CMIP5 from PCMDI) have been added.
The ESGF P2P Gateway allows users to download data through the data cart. The data cart can viewed in a similar way to the traditional e-commerce "shopping- cart" application, where users place item selections in a selection bundle in preparation for checkout.
Users may view their dataset selections in the data cart simply by navigating over to the data cart tab. The user will see
Users may view individual files associated with a dataset by clicking the "expand" link.
Note that users may download individual files via http by navigating to that file and clicking the download link. For bulk downloads, we have an option for creating a wget script. The user need only click the wget link and a bash script is sent to the end user's local machine.
Note: In using the script, please refer to the myproxy logon documentation for certification information.
The ESGF P2P Gateway contains basic administration functionality that allows pre-determined admins to manage user accounts and specified groups.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Last update: October 17, 2011