Soaring web site retiring

Ken

I offered to host it.. no word so far..

I have gotten a few responses by e-mail so far. I'll try to get back to everyone today.

At the risk of offending some, are there any places that you *don't* want the the data to go? (You can e-mail me on that one. )

Let me add some details.

There are two 'databases' on our web site that I think are of interest. One is the online sailplane directory. The other is a listing of soaring sites around the world. They are not 'active' databases. They are just text and image files. Nothing but a plain web server is required to make them available. That is, you don't need database software, CGI scripts, etc. The total disk space required to store this data is quite small (<10 M.

Anyone is welcome to copy these databases and put them on their own web server. You *will* need to go through the files and replace my e-mail address with yours. As I said, I can tar these directories up for anyone who wants them. You can also pretty-up my spartan interface.

If there are multiple copies of these databases on the web, however, they will soon become inconsistent, so it would be best if someone was will to take ownship and act as the 'authoritative' source. Someone with database and web programming knowledge could move the data into a real database, which would make maintenance easier (at least in theory). Some of the files date back to 1994, and it would be nice if the new 'owner' could commit to maintaining them for at least a few years.

The third resource on the web site is the soaring forecast server. I realize that this will be more difficult for someone to duplicate because it requires an NWS data feed and the ability to run Kevin's scripts. If you don't know anything about NWS data feeds, then you definitely don't want to volunteer to do this. It seems likely to me that only an institution will be able to provide this service.

I may be willing to continue to provide the soraing forecasts on one of our other servers as a public service (that is, as a service of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Texas A&M, not me personally). The problem here is not servers or storage, it is that our system administrators are so overworked that I cringe to ask them to do this. (It can be time consuming to keep things running.)

So if you respond, please let me know what you are offering in regards to each of the three items above: 1) sailplane database, 2) soaring site database, and 3) soaring forecast server.

Regards, Ken k-bowman (at) tamu.edu