On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 15:06 -0800, Christopher Lippitt wrote: > I created a wiki page here (http://www.openaerialmap.org/RELEIF_Nov09) > to propose alternative "phase 1" approaches with Schuyler's as the the > first. [snip] > > This approach will allow us to flush out and compare a few different > architecture approaches directly, and then come out of the meeting > with a clearer picture of how to start building the larger system and > hopefully with a small code base to start from.
Chris, thanks for your work in getting OAM started, and for taking the time to outline these big-picture options on the wiki. I edited the page slightly to reflect a few more specifics on these options. I want to suggest in the strongest possible terms that a fully centralized solution, although simpler in some ways, and more comforting to organizations with strong hierarchical authority, I think such an approach is going to prove to be unworkable. First, no organization has yet volunteered to provide 100s of TB of hosting, with full backups, and gigabits of bandwidth, both of which we will eventually need if this takes off. Don has graciously put in for funding for 10 TB of hosting, but if we tile the 15m NGA data he has (been?) offered, we will use up all of that space instantly, between the tiles and the source imagery. Second, a centralized data warehouse is a single point of failure. OAM has already had problems with this in the most recent iteration. I will repeat myself here by saying that I think that an unreliable OAM is worse than no OAM at all, because it will only serve to discredit the concept and discourage the community. Also, while each of the three options you describe have distinctive merit, they all depend on a metadata catalog to make the whole thing work. I would like to suggest that we discuss seriously making the further development of the metadata service the first priority for renewed technical work on OAM. I'm hoping to wrangle together folks who are interested in this at Random Hacks of Kindness next week, and perhaps we'll have something pulled together for discussion at Camp Roberts the week after? SDE _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://openaerialmap.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_openaerialmap.org
