The EPIC Web Browser is Web application that provides interactive on-line data access to EPIC hydrographic data sets. It allows user to view the oceanographic in-situ data by creating plots on-the-fly, generating listings, data downloading etc.

The EPIC Web Browser consists of a set of perl routines which initiate back-end database access, invoke the EPIC programs to make the plot or data listing, and generate the results page dynamically. These routines are designed to be called as CGI-scripts, either with the POST or GET command. Alternatively, the scripts can also be called from inside other perl programs. Graphics are generated with the PPLUS package and Meta-files from PPLUS are converted to GIF-forma with m2gif . The EPIC Web Browser version 2.0 implements JavaScripts and Java Applets to provide highly user interactive data selection features.

The EPIC Web Browser is the analysis tool behind our Web-based interface to PMEL data. Another example is the Coastal Marine time series data from USGS.

The following functions are avavilable (as of January 2000):

• Plot (T,S,Sigma-t,Ox) vs. Pressure/Depth
• Plot Temperature vs. Salinity
• Plot user-selected Property vs. Pressure/Depth
• Plot two user-selected Properties against each other
• List data-file in ASCII format
• Download data-file in binary (EPIC/netCDF) format
• View meta-data/attributes of data-file
• Edit pointerfile (= data-file selection)
• Download pointerfile (only for in-house users)
• Plot Station Locations
• Make vertical section plots

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The EPIC Web Browser is developed by EPIC team. (This Web site design including JavaScripts and Java Applets in EPIC Web Browser version 2 as well as back-end database implemented are written by Willa Zhu. If you have technical questions about EPIC Web Browser or comments about this web site, please send email to epic@noaa.gov .)