Dynamic software components for your project
The APEx Instantiation Services are designed to provide managed, configurable environments that support the collaboration, development, exploration, and visualisation of application project results. These services are crucial for facilitating the effective sharing, maintenance, and utilisation of project outcomes within the Earth Observation (EO) community, ensuring that they remain readily accessible and usable for extended periods.
APEx aims to cater to the diverse and multifaceted needs of the EO community by delivering Software as a Service (SaaS) products. It manages the delivery of single-user or shared work environments within a unified cloud infrastructure, facilitating a wide range of user tasks including development, hosting, execution, and exploratory analysis of EO applications.
At the core of the APEx Instantiation Services is the ability to manage and deliver these environments effectively. Project-wide community-orientated services, such as the portal, catalogue, documentation portal, and user forum, are managed directly by Kubernetes and typically instantiated once per project. Conversely, single-user-specific workspaces allow the instantiation of services by a single user at any time. These services including the User Workspace, Interactive Development Environment (IDE), and, in certain cases, dashboards and web applications, are managed by JupyterHub. JupyterHub orchestrates the launching and management of these software deployments, ensuring isolated and customizable environments for individual users.
A key feature of the APEx Instantiation Services is the ability to provide managed, configurable environments. These environments can be tailored to the specific needs of different projects and users, supporting various tasks including development, hosting, execution, and exploratory analysis of EO applications. This flexibility and configurability allow these projects to focus on their primary research objectives without being bogged down by the technical complexities of setting up and maintaining their workspaces.
The specific components of the APEx Instantiation Services include:
- Geospatial Explorer: Provide a data-driven user interface to display and visualise geospatial and tabular data from a range of supported web services, based on a configuration defined by a dashboard administrator.
- Project Portals: Creating a project website based on Drupal, working in synergy with other APEx services.
- User Workspaces: Offering secure and personalised work environments with data-sharing mechanisms.
- Interactive Development Environments: Leveraging Code Server (VS Code in the browser) tailored specifically for EO tasks.
- Product Catalogues: Featuring SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) catalogues and streamlined data ingestion processes.
- Documentation Portals: Supporting customization and interactive visualisation using the Quarto framework.
- User Forums: Providing a community-building platform based on open-source software Discourse.
The APEx Instantiation Services will be essential for ensuring that the results of EO projects are effectively shared and utilised, fostering greater collaboration and innovation within the EO community. By providing robust, scalable, and user-friendly environments, the APEx Instantiation Services help maximise the impact of EO research and applications.