The EarthCube Architecture Forum held on June 24-25, 2014, aimed to accelerate community convergence on a reference architecture through sessions focused on terminology, purpose, documentation, and scope. Desired outcomes included a shared understanding of reference architecture and recommendations for a standing committee charter, along with discussions on existing systems and conceptual designs. Participants were encouraged to engage with building blocks and recorded key insights throughout the workshop.

1. EarthCube Architecture
Forum
June 24-25, 2014

2. Scheduled Sessions: EarthCube All
Hands Meeting
● Session 1: Tuesday, 2:00-3:30 pm
● Session 2: Wednesday, 10:00 am
● Session 3: Wednesday, 2:00 pm

3. Session Goal:
Accelerate community
convergence on an EarthCube
reference architecture
Technical discussion, community decision (everyone needs to understand)

4. Via...
● Initial agreement on:
o Terminology
o Purpose of a reference architecture
o How is it documented
o Scope and granularity
● Lay groundwork for upcoming Test Governance
activities regarding architecture

5. Key Questions
● What is the Enterprise that EarthCube serves?
(what is the scope)
● What architecture elements need to be defined
for EarthCube at this point? (if we had these defined, what
could we do with it?)

6. Desired Workshop Outcomes
● Progress toward a shared understanding of what constitutes
a reference architecture
● Understand emerging architecture based on EarthCube
relevant funded projects and the data facilities
● Recommendations for the Technology/Architecture Standing
Committee charter

7. Agenda:
1. NSF comments on Architecture
2. Workshop overview
3. Panel discussion: Architecture in existing systems
4. EarthCube conceptual design projects, progress reports
end of first session, exercises
1. Group discussion (what does EC need, terminology harmonization)
We’ll be making it up as we go from here....
● EarthCube building blocks and data facilities as de facto architecture(top
down vs. bottom up design)
● Recommendations for Technical/Architecture Standing Committee charter

8. Some logistics
Google documents http://tinyurl.com/lzz9jys :
● Notes: capture discussion, ideas, decisions,
sense of the workshop
● Glossary: capture definitions of terms used
in discussion so we’re all on the same
page...

9. Ongoing engagement
1. Jot down thoughts on:
what did I hear...
...that I agree with
...that I disagree with
...that I didn’t know
...what surprised me
...what concepts do I want to have a deeper conversation about
2. Look at building blocks posters tonight and think about how
they fit into a system of systems architecture

10. Panel Discussion
Krzysztof Janowicz (OceanLink)
Nirav Merchant (iPlant)
George Percivall (GEOSS)

11. Conceptual design presentations
Phil Yang: Conceptual Design 1
Ilya Zaslavsky: Conceptual Design 2

12. Glossary guidelines
•Feel free to edit existing definitions (please don’t
change the meaning)
•Different definition – Different term
•Definitions: genus and differentia
•Citing some authority is a good thing
•Concise, clear, and unambiguous definitions
are more important