An interactive data access and retrieval system, developed at the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Genter (NODG) and available at <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" href="http://www.node.noaa.gov">http://www.node.noaa.gov</ext-link>, is presented in this paper. The purposes of
this paper are: (1) to illustrate the procedures of quality control and loading oceanographic data into the NODG ocean databases and (2) to describe the development of a system to manage, visualize, and disseminate the NODG data holdings over the Internet. The objective of the system is to
provide ease of access to data that will be required for data assimilation models. With advances in scientific understanding of the ocean dynamics, data assimilation models require the synthesis of data from a variety of resources. Modern intelligent data systems usually involve integrating
distributed heterogeneous data and information sources. As the repository for oceanographic data, NOAA’s National Oceanographic Data Genter (NODG) is in a unique position to develop such a data system. In support of the data assimilation needs, NODG has developed a system to facilitate
browsing of the oceanographic environmental data and information that is available on-line at NODG. Users may select oceanographic data based on geographic areas, time periods and measured parameters. Once the selection is complete, users may produce a station location plot, produce plots
of the parameters or retrieve the data.