ORNL DAAC MODIS Home Page

MODIS Web Service

The MODIS Web service provides users with subsets of MODIS Land Products through standards based SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) Web service. Through the Web service users can access functions to execute on their machine. A list of functions available to users are provided in the table below. The MODIS web service is built on ORNL DAAC's MODIS Global subsetting and visualization tool that provides customized subsets and visualization of MODIS land products for any land location on the globe.


Using the Web Service users can

  • Retrieve subsets through command line operation
  • Get subsets directly into software such as Kepler, Matlab and integrate the subsets into client side workflow
  • Write custom code to use the subsets for visualization or data reformatting
  • .. and much more

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document for the MODIS web service is based on WSDL version 1.1 and can be accessed from
http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MODIS/GLBVIZ_1_Glb_subset/MODIS_webservice.wsdl

Web Service Functions Available

Function
( Example Request)
Input Output Example Response
getproducts() NONE This returns the list of products available. Product shortname is used. MOD11A2, MOD13Q1, MOD09A1, MOD15A2, MOD17A2, MCD43A4, MYD09A1....
getbands("MOD13Q1") Product This returns the list of bands available for a product 250m_16_days_NDVI,250m_16_days_EVI, 250m_16_days_VI_Quality...
getdates(
40,
-110,
"MOD13Q1")
Latitude,
Longitude,
Product
This returns the list of composite dates available for the product, Latitude, Longitude combination A2000065, A2000081, A2000097, A2000113....
getsubset(
40,
-110,
"MOD13Q1",
"250m_16_days_NDVI",
"A2000065",
"A20000081",
10,
10)
Latitude,
Longitude,
Product,
Band,
MODIS Subset Start Date,
MODIS Subset End Date,
Km Above Below,
Km Left Right
This returns the subset in ASCII format for the location, product, band and date combination with detailed projection and band information. MOD13Q1.A2000065.h09v04.005.2008238050507.250m_16_days_NDVI, MOD13Q1, A2000065, Lat40.0Lon-110.0Samp21Line21, 2008238050507, 1177, 1164, 1116, 1198, 1256, 1226, 1177, 1154, 1267, 1348, 1277, 1345, 1411, 1341, 1278, 1217, 1232, 1244, 1262, ...
MOD13Q1.A2000081.h09v04.005.2008196123306.250m_16_days_NDVI, MOD13Q1, A2000081, Lat40.0Lon-110.0Samp21Line21, 2008196123306, 1194, 1144, 1162, 1247, 1263, 1250, 1285, 1347, 1228, 1347, 1321, 1393, 1373, 1346, 1312, 1312, 1313, 1261, 1278, ...

To aid users with setting up the web service, we have provided the following example clients.

JAVA client

Launch Application   [This demo requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.4 or above installed on your system]
Download Source Code
This client is written in JAVA and uses JAVA Swing technology. The client is a standalone software application that allows users to create MODIS subsets through a graphical user interface which connects to the ORNL DAAC MODIS Web service. Current functions allow the user to specify a rectangle area around a location (Note: the location has to be on land or else no data would be returned), time range, product and band to obtain the subset. The returned subset can be saved to local file system in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. This client is developed as an example application that consumes the MODIS subsetting web service. Users can develop similar interfaces with targeted functionality.

Perl client

Download   [Right Click and save file with *.pl extension]
This client is written in Perl and uses SOAP-Lite Perl module.The Perl client example allows users to submit request for a subset. The interface could be customized further to add more complex operations at the client end.

Kepler

Download   [Save file with *.xml extension and open with Kepler]
Kepler [ http://kepler-project.org/ ]is an open source cross-project, cross-institution collaboration to build and evolve a scientific workflow system. The Kepler example performs two Web service operations. The first operations retrieves the dates available for a particular location. The second operation iteratively retrieves the subsets for each of the dates. This example can be further expanded to store the retrieved subsets into a file and/or create additional operations such as data transformation, statistical analysis, graph plotting etc.

Please Note: The MODIS subsetting Web Service has been tested with Axis 1.3, 1.4,Kepler 1.0.0, SOAP-Lite 0.70, 0.71 clients. Other clients such as .Net may have trouble connecting to this web service.

Help/Questions

For details regarding the MODIS Land Products please visit the Land Processes DAAC website.

References:

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl.html

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

[3] http://ws.apache.org/axis/

[4] http://search.cpan.org/~byrne/SOAP-Lite-0.65_5/

[5] http://daac.ornl.gov/modisglobal

[6] http://kepler-project.org/

[7] https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/modis_product_table