WISARD: A Web Interface for Searching Archival Research Data on NDADS

N. Oliversen 
P. Lawton 
Hughes STX/ADF
Astrophysics Data Facility, Code 631
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD  20771
Oliversen: 301-286-1598
Lawton:    301-286-1293
noliversen@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov
lawton@cannon.gsfc.nasa.gov

M. Van Steenberg 
GSFC/ADF
Astrophysics Data Facility, Code 631
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD  20771
Van Steenberg: 301-286-7876
mev@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov

We will present the new Web Interface for Searching Archival Research
Data (WISARD) on the NASA Data Archive and Distribution System
(NDADS).   The NDADS near-line archive currently contains about 1200
Gigabytes of space science data from 17 NASA astrophysics projects and
7 NASA space physics missions.  Until recently, in order to request
data from NDADS, a user would first have to first obtain a catalog of
the data of interest on NDADS and/or search a database maintained by
one of the projects and then make a separate request for the desired
data.  This multistep process was clearly not as efficient it could
be.  We have, therefore, developed WISARD to improve the accessibility
of the data on NDADS and to facilitate multi-wavelength, multi-mission
research using the NDADS archives.

WISARD supports queries on fields which are in-common between the
various NDADS catalogs (i.e. target coordinates and date of
observation); choice of search epoch (1950, 2000); catalog-specific
field searches (e.g. instrument, object class, etc.); search criteria
refinements; query unions and intersections on multiple catalogs;
default and user-specified display of the query results; and
subsequent requests of selected data to NDADS.

An important part of this effort is the preparation of catalogs of the
data on NDADS.  WISARD initially will contain logs of the IUE,
WUPPE/Astro 1, HUT/Astro 1 and ROSAT missions.  Additional mission
catalogs are planned to be added to WISARD when available.

The WISARD software utilizes a form-based World Wide Web (WWW)
interface to software using an IDL (Interactive Data Language)
database.  Some of the underlying IDL software in WISARD is based on
software originally developed by the Goddard High Resolution
Spectrograph (GHRS), the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), and
the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) science teams.  The IUE merged
log of observations was provided via a collaborative effort with the
IUE Data Analysis Center (IUEDAC).