The VLADA white paper: building an active Virtual Lab for Advanced Data Analysis

This technical white paper describes the design and initial implementation of a virtual environment for straightforward and robust data analysis intended for students and researchers acting in science and technology. The Virtual Laboratory for Advanced Data Analysis (VLADA) aims to fill a growing demand for scientific mathematical and statistical tools validated and coupled with appropriate high performance computing infrastructure into a single computing environment available on the Web using advanced parallel processing and object-oriented programming. This work proposes to provide: (i) a detailed study on the feasibility of building a such virtual environment with large international access, and (ii) a description of a preliminary single prototype including a standard method for advanced time series analysis. The main steps taken to develop such a laboratory, including preliminary software engineering implementation, are shown in this paper.