Service-oriented architecture wasn’t on the minds of NASA personnel in 2000 when they started updating a directory of Earth science data. In fact, most hadn’t even heard the abstract term. They only wanted to do a better job of addressing a widespread audience with diverse hardware requirements. “With the emergence of the Web and new collaborative technologies, we found that members of the Earth science community wanted to have more control over what goes into and comes out of their own research,” said Robin Pfister, development manager for the NASA Earth Observing System Clearing House, also known as ECHO (www.echo.eos.nasa.gov). Planned or not, the drive to unify resources brought NASA to the cutting edge of SOA. Originally an index of Web-based material, ECHO was expanded to offer a machine-readable directory of services that can manipulate data as well. The advanced services went live last September.
