The National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) funded a project to develop the foundation for a National Virtual Ocean Data System (NVODS) that has resulted in a robust data access framework for the exchange of oceanographic data (the Open source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol, or OPeNDAP) and a broad community of ocean data providers that remains vigorous and growing five years after NOPP funding ended. The project produced a number of “lessons learned” related to the design and implementation of distributed data systems that can inform other related efforts. These lessons are presented along with a brief overview of OPeNDAP and summaries of a number of projects that depend on OPeNDAP for data distribution.

Cornillon, P., J. Adams, M.B. Blumenthal, E. Chassignet, E. Davis, S. Hankin, J. Kinter, R. Mendelssohn, J.T. Potemra, A. Srinivasan, and J. Sirott. 2009. NVODS and the development of OPeNDAP. Oceanography 22(2):116–127, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2009.43.

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1. Sirott, J., J. Callahan, and S. Hankin. 2001. Inside the Live Access Server. Paper presented at the 17th International Conference on Interactive Information and Processing Systems for Meteorology, January 14–18, 2001, Albuquerque, NM, American Meteorological Society.
2. Sirott, J., D.W. Denbo, and W. Zhu. 2004. Dapper: An OPeNDAP server for in-situ data. Paper presented at the 20th International Conference on Interactive Information Processing Systems, January 11–15, 2004, Seattle, WA, American Meteorological Society.

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