TerraServer and the Russia adventure...

ABSTRACT

Jim Gray made many friends and few enemies in his career. Many of the projects he worked on were inspired by one or more of his friends and collaborators in industry and academia.

The original idea for an "image server" happened in the early 1990s when Jim was at Digital. Jim had met Jeff Dozier while working on the National Research Council's "Computing the Future" committee [NRC 1994]. Jeff became Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Sciences and chair of UC Santa Barbara's Alexandria Digital Library advisory board. Jeff asked Jim to serve on the board.

During an Alexandria board meeting, Jeff and Jim discussed the idea for a "geospatial image server". All they needed was a lot of accessible imagery, someone that wanted it done, and someone foolish enough to load a few tera-bytes of data. The cold war ended enabling the high resolution imagery marketplace. Microsoft SQL Server wanted a scalability internet demonstration. And I walked into Jim Gray's lab looking for a reason to move back to San Francisco. And that's where my 10 year project with Jim Gray and TerraServer begins...

REFERENCES

• 1: {ADL 1999} http://www.sdc.ucsb.edu
• 2: {Gray} http://research.microsoft.com/~Gray/
• 3: {NRC 1994} Computing the Future, National Research Council, 1994 http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/ctf/
• 4: {TerraServer} Published papers about TerraServer http://terraserver-usa.com/About.aspx?n=AboutPapers

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  A. General Literature
  A.0 GENERAL

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.5 COMPUTER SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
      C.5.1 Large and Medium ("Mainframe") Computers
          Subjects: Super (very large) computers
      C.5.5 Servers