ChronosServer: Fast in situ processing of large multidimensional arrays with command line tools

Abstract

Explosive growth of raster data volumes in numerical simulations, remote sensing and other fields stimulate the development of new efficient data processing techniques. For example, in-situ approach queries data in diverse file formats avoiding time-consuming import phase. However, after data are read from file, their further processing always takes place with code developed almost from scratch. Standalone command line tools are one of the most popular ways for in-situ processing of raster files. Decades of development and feedback resulted in numerous feature-rich, elaborate, free and quality-assured tools optimized mostly for a single machine. The paper reports current development state and first results on performance evaluation of ChronosServer – distributed system partially delegating in-situ raster data processing to external tools. The new delegation approach is anticipated to readily provide rich collection of raster operations at scale. ChronosServer already outperforms state-of-the-art array DBMS on single machine up to 193☓.