MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
2. MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS & EVOLUTIONS 
(2018-2021) 
The Consortium adopted a modular Service-Oriented 
Approach (SOA) in order to match requirements with 
avolutions. Due to the tight operative schedule, the 
complexity of the system and the lack of formal standards 
for some important items involved (e.g., data), the initial 
setup could neither take all needed details into account nor 
focus on components automation. In order to mitigate 
these weaknesses, systems are organised into components 
with well-defined interfaces. 
Since the very first release (Q1 2018), and at each following 
one (at least 3 per year), the DU team adopted continuous 
review and evolution cycle strategies to cope with the 
constant increase of product number, data quality and user 
transactions. Indeed, these changes induced some 
challenges in terms of compatibility or resource allocation. 
The DU evolution cycle fills the gap between stakeholder’s 
needs and expectations and DU's operation. The framework 
behind the DU evolution cycle is represented by the 
following workflow: planning, development and testing, 
integration, maintenance, operative assessment and 
analysis, requirements analysis (see Figure 3). 
ain Stakeholders 
& Users 
* Requirements a 
analysis 
Planning 
r[. 
Based on this framework, in order to improve the Service 
on different aspects, the DU team has been constantly 
reviewing and updating the architecture design and 
ınternal procedures, focusing on: 
infrastructure, 
- software, 
- collaboration with CMEMS Top Level, production 
centres, software developers, 
- consortium composition. 
The DU team has been continually reviewing and updating 
the architecture design. The Consortium invested time and 
resources in improving the backend (connectivity, VMs 
numbers and resources, disk type, etc) and redistributing 
‚re-balancing) products amongst virtual machines (VMs). 
"o be noted, the cloud provider is an external, independent 
zomponent; the DU team collaborated with them in order 
to identify and improve possible low-level bottlenecks. 
Moreover, the Copernicus Marine Service DU improved the 
Development Systems, used for debugging activities and 
facilitating the integration of new products and datasets, 
added a “PU Play Ground” System (PU’s testbed for DBS 
access and new Releases upload process) and severa 
different Monitoring Systems and dashboards according to 
MOI feedback and Internal needs. 
L Devlopment 
& testing 
Dissemination Unit ) 
Evolution 
Cvcle 
\. 
Operative assessment 7 
& analysis 
. 9m 
Maintenance 
I 7 ntegration, 
Operation 
gure 3: CMEMS phase2 DUfs) evolution cvecle