VAPOR GUI supports the use of IDL for performing analysis of data during the visualization process. A library of IDL operators is available that can read and write data to and from a VAPOR VDC. Note however that this API can only be used with VAPOR VDC1 data.
Using the VAPOR IDL library users can identify regions of interest in the data, perform IDL analysis on the data, and visualize the results. For example, a common way to use IDL with VAPOR GUI is the following interative analysis process:
- During the visualization process, an artifact of the current data is identified that requires further analysis
- Set the current region to enclose the artifact of interest.
- From the Data panel, click "Export to IDL". This will create a file that specifies the current region and time step in a format that is readable by the VAPOR IDL library.
- From an IDL session, perform analysis on the data in the region, and construct additional variables as a result of this analysis.
- From the IDL session, write the new data to a VAPOR VDC using the IDL data export capability.
- From the VAPOR GUI Data menu, click "Merge a VDC dataset into Current Session". This augments the current VAPOR GUI session to include the new variables that were constructed in IDL.
- Continue with the visualization as in step 1.
The above process is described with a detailed example in section 5 of the VAPOR Quick Start Guide.
