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TRIP TRIP v3.1 Text/Object Database Management System Selected, Up & Running at CalSpace Earthrise/KidSat Program Continued which controls the electronic still camera. Once the commands are executed (the designated area photographed), the digital images are downloaded to the notebook, transmitted to the MCC, and then sent to the KidSat Data Archive Center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. The students at the Student Mission Operations Centers can then access the images and accompanying data at the KidSat Data Archive Center via Internet using WWW. Every mission generates a few thousand images, each about 18Mbyte in size, and to date the Shuttle flights have accumulated over two hundred and twenty thousand digitized images. With so many images to handle, and each with its corresponding data such as image captions, camera commands, cloud cover, geographic features, etc., there needed to be a way to store and easily retrieve each image. TRIP is optimized for handling different types and large amounts of data, with virtually no limit on amount of data per field or record, number of fields or records per database, number of databases per system, or size of any database. According to Fred Peters of NASA, assigned to CalSpace, "TRIP acts like an access librarian - it is a good product for us, allowing us to quickly and easily manipulate these images." TRIP's set-up (simple CD ROM installation) was right out of the box, including a WWW gateway program, connecting TRIP and the KidSat web server, using a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) to allow the web server to communicate with other programs. All data in the TRIP database is stored in native form and references the images stored on a super computer. The gateway program performs structured and free text searches that dynamically generate HTML (hyper text mark-up language) code through TRIP's report generator. A team of UCSD students, led by Computer Engineering student Jesse Keller and coordinated by Physics student Adam Burgasser and Cognitive Science student Sarah Wustner, have incorporated the TRIP software into the KidSat project with an output format specialized to the Earthrise database. Searches are performed using form-based methodology, feature icons, or geographic locations selected from a map which are translated and submitted to the TRIP database via the TRIP WWW interface. The user interface works with both NetScape and Mosaic using all standard WWW protocols. CalSpace's selection of TRIP underscores the broadening popularity that this new American company, TRIP Systems International, is enjoying. As evidenced at CalSpace, TRIP's leading edge Text/Object Database technology is now available for demanding applications requiring the ability to store and retrieve information in a variety of forms and formats, including text, structured data, full documents, graphics, photos, video, audio - in fact, any type or combination of multimedia. For more information, contact: TRIP Systems International 487 Federal Road Brookfield, CT 06804 phone (203) 740-7200; fax (203) 740-2344