The document discusses the scope, challenges, and strategy for developing an architecture for EarthCube. It notes that the scope will be determined through broad community engagement to meet the needs of Earth science research and education. There are competing approaches and integrating legacy systems presents challenges due to the diversity of Earth science information. The strategy is to develop the architecture based on end-user needs through an incremental and merit-based process, starting with a conceptual design phase.

1. -Scope
› determined by community through broad engagement
› must meet the needs of Earth Science research and education
community
-Challenges:
› There are competing approaches
› Have to integrate legacy systems
› Diversity and complexity of Earth Science Information.
-Strategy
› architecture development based on end-user needs
› incremental process based on merit, feasibility and competence
› conceptual design phase (now), refinement, then implementation

2. Quick overview from IT team with key points from workshop
held at All Hands meeting 2014-06-24 and 25.
Compiled by Stephen Richard 2014-07-09 for EarthCube Town
Hall at ESIP summer meeting, Copper Mountain, Colorado.

3. A high level view of a system that can used as a
guide to assess if something fits or doesn’t fit.
› The architecture for a system is like a reference book for a
discipline.
› Identify gaps, establish priorities

4. Ocean Link, iPlant, GEOSS
Community infrastructure is a system of systems
› continuously undergoing evolutionary development;
› must adapt to and satisfy user needs in a community driven way.
Constituent systems have their own architecture; EC architecture
must integrate these by focusing on the gateways (interfaces)
that link them.
Employ both bottom up and top down approaches in developing
the architecture.

5. Scenarios for
assembling
building blocks

6. Provide framework to show how EarthCube building blocks fit
together
Occupy middle ground between the uncoordinated technology-
Bazaar model and the single monolithic system model.
Describe the kinds of communications necessary and the kinds of
objects that need to be exchanged.

7. Architecture doesn’t dictate the technology, it dictates the
interfaces.
Components should be modular and loosely coupled; easy
to plug in new components
Decouple user interface and functional components.

8. purpose: To foster and coordinate the development of the
evolving EarthCube architecture and technology.
Distinguish production software development (infrastructure)
and research software development
Evaluate architecture performance against stated end-user
needs.
…Many additional suggestions for charter

9. Questions discussion
Comments from discussion at EC Town Hall
need some way to see what current building blocks are and how they relate to each;
Use diagrams from workshop as indication.