EDAC Help: Viewing data

In this section:

Introducing the View tab

The View tab is the main data display mechanism for the data access client and acts as a visual data browser. Users would normally search for data of interest using the Catalog tab, then switch to the View tab to view data of interest interactively. For convenience, the data access client starts up with the View tab selected and displaying the most current data from the first dataset. Users can modify the data view by using the tool bar buttons, the date/time selector, and by clicking and dragging on the data view itself.

Components of the View tab

The following figure shows the main components of the client when the View tab is selected:

Dataset selector
The name of the current dataset being displayed. A dataset consists of a number of files, each of which contains data for a specific date and time. When the user selects a new dataset, the client updates the data view to display the new data. The client always finds the file whose date and time match as closely as possible when switching from one dataset to the next.
Date/time selector
The starting date and time of the current file being displayed. Datasets may have many or only a few files available, depending on how often the data is collected and if the data is a temporal composite or a single satellite pass. Click the date/time selector or use the Next and Previous buttons to select a new date/time for the data view.
Tool bar
Various tools for manipulating the data view:
Grid Overlay - Toggles the latitude/longitude grid with labels.
Coast Overlay - Toggles the coast lines and land mask (based on GSHHS polygon data).
Political Overlay - Toggles the international and state borders (based on WDBII data).
Zoom In x2 - Magnifies the data view by two times.
Zoom Out x2 - Shrinks the data view by two times.
Zoom to Selected - Magnifies the data view on a certain area. Click and drag the mouse over the data view to select a zoom rectangle.
Pan View Area - Pans the data view. Click and drag on the data view to show nearby areas.
Show Region - Zooms the data view to a region of interest by geographic region name. Click the tool bar button and select from the drop-down menu of names.
Reset View - Resets the data view to show the full dataset region.
Change Palette - Changes the color scale palette. Select from many different color palettes and the data view changes accordingly. When the dataset is changed, the client saves the user's selected palette and restores it when viewing the same dataset again.
Change Scale - Changes the color scale minimum and maximum data values. Select the new color scale range and press Enter or click Apply, and the data view changes accordingly. As with the palette, the color scale range is saved and restored again when switching between datasets.
Download Data - Downloads the data file for the current data view. See Accessing data files for details on the data format.
Show OPeNDAP - Shows the OPeNDAP form for the current data view. See Accessing data files for details on OPeNDAP.
Data view
The color enhancement plot of the current dataset and file date/time. The color enhancement shows the data values converted to color values using the color scale on the right. The user can click and drag to manipulate the data view when the Zoom or Pan tool bar buttons are selected.
Color scale
The color scale for the current dataset. The color scale may be used as a reference for the data view and displays the current palette, data value tick marks, and the view variable name and units. The color scale can be changed by clicking the Palette or Scale tool bar buttons.
Track bar
The mouse pointer tracking information. When the mouse pointer passes over the data view, the geographic latitude and longitude at the pointer location is updated along with the data view value. Latitude and longitude are displayed in decimal degrees.

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