ORCA Glossary
A
API Gateway
Refers to AWS's API Gateway. Used by the Cumulus API.
ARN
Refers to an AWS "Amazon Resource Name". For more info, see the AWS documentation.
AWS
See: aws.amazon.com
AWS Lambda/Lambda Function
AWS's 'serverless' option. Allows the running of code without provisioning a service or managing server/ECS instances/etc.
For more information, see the AWS Lambda documentation.
AWS Access Keys
Access credentials that give you access to AWS to act as a IAM user programmatically or from the command line. For more information, see the AWS IAM Documentation.
B
Bucket
An Amazon S3 cloud storage resource.
For more information, see the AWS Bucket Documentation.
C
Cloudwatch
AWS service that allows logging and metrics collections on various cloud resources you have in AWS.
For more information, see the AWS User Guide.
Cloud Notification Mechanism (CNM)
An interface mechanism to support cloud-based ingest messaging. For more information, see PO.DAAC's CNM Schema.
Common Metadata Repository (CMR)
"A high-performance, high-quality, continuously evolving metadata system that catalogs Earth Science data and associated service metadata records".
For more information, see NASA's CMR page.
Collection (Cumulus)
Cumulus Collections are logical sets of data objects of the same data type and version.
Cumulus
A Cloud-based data ingest, archive, distribution, and management system. See https://github.com/nasa/cumulus.
Cumulus Message Adapter (CMA)
A library designed to help task developers integrate step function tasks into a Cumulus workflow by adapting task input/output into the Cumulus Message format.
For more information, see CMA workflow reference page.
D
Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC)
Refers to a specific organization that's part of NASA's distributed system of archive centers. For more information see EOSDIS's DAAC page.
Dead Letter Queue (DLQ)
This refers to Amazon SQS Dead-Letter Queues - these SQS queues are specifically configured to capture failed messages from other services/SQS queues/etc to allow for processing of failed messages.
For more on DLQs, see the Amazon Documentation and the Cumulus DLQ feature page.
Deep Archive Storage
Amazon S3 Deep Archive is Comparable to Amazon S3 Glacier but with a lower cost in exchange for slower retrieval time. See Storage Class documentation for more details.
E
Elastic Container Service (ECS)
Amazon's Elastic Container Service. Used in Cumulus by workflow steps that require more flexibility than Lambda can provide.
For more information, see AWS's developer guide.
ECS Activity
An ECS instance run via a Step Function.
EMS
Execution (Cumulus)
A Cumulus execution refers to a single execution of a (Cumulus) Workflow.
F
G
GIBS
Global Imagery Browse Services
Glacier Storage
Amazon S3 Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. ORCA supports the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval variant, and these documents will use the terms interchangeably. See Storage Class documentation for more details.
Granule
A granule is the smallest aggregation of data that can be independently managed (described, inventoried, and retrieved). Granules are always associated with a collection, which is a grouping of granules. A granule is a grouping of data files.
H
I
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
AWS Identity and Access Management.
For more information, see AWS IAMs.
J
K
Kinesis
Amazon's platform for streaming data on AWS.
See AWS Kinesis for more information.
L
Lambda
AWS's cloud service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.
For more information, see AWS's lambda page.
M
Module (Terraform)
Refers to a terraform module.
N
NGAP
NASA General Application Platform. NGAP provides a cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for ESDIS applications. NGAP provides NASA applications with the Authority to Operate (ATO) in the AWS commercial cloud.
Node
See node.js.
NPM
Node package manager.
For more information, see npmjs.com.
O
Operator
Refers to those tasked with monitoring, configuring or otherwise utilizing Cumulus/ORCA in an operational deployment.
ORCA
Operational Recovery Cloud Archive. See https://github.com/nasa/cumulus-orca
OU
AWS Organizational Unit. More information on OUs can be found here.
P
PDR
"Polling Delivery Mechanism" used in "DAAC Ingest" workflows.
For more information, see nasa.gov.
Packages (NPM)
NPM hosted node.js packages. Cumulus packages can be found on NPM's site here.
Provider
Data source that generates and/or distributes data for Cumulus workflows to act upon.
For more information, see the Cumulus documentation.
Python
See Python.org.
Q
R
Rule
Rules are configurable scheduled events that trigger workflows based on various criteria.
For more information, see the Cumulus Rules documentation.
S
S3
Amazon's Simple Storage Service provides data object storage in the cloud. Used in Cumulus to store configuration, data and more.
For more information, see AWS's S3 page.
SIPS
Science Investigator-led Processing Systems. In the context of DAAC ingest, this refers to data producers/providers.
For more information, see nasa.gov.
SNS
Amazon's Simple Notification Service provides a messaging service that allows publication of and subscription to events. Used in Cumulus to trigger workflow events, track event failures, and others.
For more information, see AWS's SNS page.
SQS
Amazon's Simple Queue Service.
For more information, see AWS's SQS page.
Stack
A collection of AWS resources you can manage as a single unit.
In the context of Cumulus, this refers to a deployment of the cumulus and data-persistence modules that is managed by Terraform.
Step Function
AWS's web service that allows you to compose complex workflows as a state machine comprised of tasks (Lambdas, activities hosted on EC2/ECS, some AWS service APIs, etc). See AWS's Step Function Documentation for more information. In the context of Cumulus these are the underlying AWS service used to create Workflows.
T
U
V
Virtual Environment (venv)
A contained environment for building/running Python code. See Setting Up a Dev Environment for more information.
W
Workflows
Workflows are comprised of one or more AWS Lambda Functions and ECS Activities to discover, ingest, process, manage and archive data.