A JAVA DATA ANALYSIS CLIENT FOR CHRONOS

Along with developing a network of chronostratigraphic databases, the CHRONOS project aims to provide users with a set of tools for display and analysis of stratigraphic and other age-related data. This presentation focuses on the development of a Java data analysis client for CHRONOS, to be delivered from the CHRONOS web site to the user’s desktop via Java Web Start. Running as a local application, the client will allow the user to access data in local files as well as data extracted from the CHRONOS data portal via an intuitive user interface. Initial capabilities of the code include simple spreadsheet-style display of data, computation of summary univariate and multivariate statistics, and basic plotting routines, including an age-depth plot allowing interactive development of a line of correlation, based on an earlier Macintosh application that has proven quite useful for this task. The primary differences between the Java client and previously existing stratigraphic data analysis applications are the platform independence provided by the Java environment, the automated connection to the CHRONOS data portal, and the automated web-based delivery and updating of the application provided by Java Web Start.