A System For the Management of Earth Science Data

In this paper we present a prototype system for the management of earth science dam 'which is novel in that it takes a DBMS centric view of the the task. Our prototype -- called "BigSur" -- is shown'in the context of its use by two geographi- cally distributed scientific groups with demand- ing data storage and processing requirements. BigSur currently stores 1 Terabyte of data, about one thousandth of the volume EOSDIS must store. We .'claim that the design principles embodied in BigSur provide sufficient flexibility to achieve the difficult scientific and technical objectives of Mission to.Planet Earth.