A FUSE-based tool for accessing meteorological data in remote servers

Abstract

This paper describes a tool for providing transparent access to online meteorological databases by way of local file system. The tool is based on FUSE, an implementation of usermode filesystem on Linux, and a user is allowed to deal with online meteorological data as if they were stored in his/her local file systems. The main target of this tool is scientists in meteorology those who are not familiar with computers and related technologies. For this reason, we attempt to provide easy ways for configuring, maintaining, and using the system. For speeding up the data transfer, we integrate a caching mechanism inside the system thereby making the number of HTTP requests smaller. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.