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The Galaxy Cluster Merger Catalog (GCMC) is a data portal developed by the primary researcher (J. Zuhone) to create an external interface to data stored in yt.hub. The site is currently hosted on Nebula with a dedicated VM and uses the hub.yt core REST API. This required 1) creating and LDAP account at NCSA for the researcher, 2) adding him to a project on Nebula and 3) configuring a VM to host his service. The researcher developed this site themselves, ostensibly using Python and Sphinx. It's difficult to manage the VM (OS upgrades, nebula migrations, etc), since it requires coordination with the researcher.
It seems that this might be a common case: a researcher produces a dataset and develops a custom "data portal" to enable exploration and reuse. This is related to but separate from the DataDNS service. Other examples include:
- Renaissance Simulation Labs: galaxyportal.sdsc.edu
- DarkSky data release: http://darksky.slac.stanford.edu/
- Millennium Database: http://gavo.mpa-garching.mpg.de/Millennium/
On the one hand we have the data, on the other a custom website or portal to provide access to it – designed and implemented by the research team.
Workbench for Researchers
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