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How OSDU Can Help Data Management

Data management can benefit from a single point of access of all subsurface data, simplifying data exchange, sharing, and consumption. For data managers, OSDU can enable new technology solutions that aggregate data, simplify search, and improve discoverability. Paired with the right subsurface data visualization platform technology, OSDU can pave the way to automate tedious tasks, workflows, and analysis, ultimately providing quicker information to stakeholders for faster decisions.

A New Era in O&G: Critical Components of Bringing Subsurface Data to the Cloud

The oil and gas industry is historically one of the first industries generating actionable data in the modern sense. For example, the first seismic imaging was done in 1932 by John Karcher. Since that first primitive image, seismic data has been digitized and has grown exponentially in size. It is usually represented in monolith data sets which may span in size from a couple of gigabytes to petabytes if pre-stack. The long history, large amount of data, and the nature of the data pose unique challenges that often make it difficult to take advantage of advancing cloud technology. Here is a high-level overview of the challenges of working with oil and gas data and some possible solutions to help companies take advantage of the latest cloud technologies. 

Human Friendly Error Handling in the IVAAP Data Backend

As the use cases of IVAAP grow, the implementation of the data backend evolves. Past releases of IVAAP have been focused on providing data portals to our customers. Since then, a new use case has appeared where IVAAP is used to validate the injection of data in the cloud. Both use cases have a lot in common, but they differ in the way errors should be handled.

How to Get the Best Performance out of Your Seismic Web Applications

One of the most challenging data management problems faced in the industry is with seismic files. Some oil and gas companies estimate that they acquire a petabyte of data per day or more. Domain knowledge and specific approaches are required to move, access, and visualize that data. In this blog post, we will dive deep into the details of modern technology that can be useful to achieve speed up.

Search, Access, and Visualize OSDU Data with IVAAP

INT has been working with the Open Subsurface Data Universe™ (OSDU) consortium since the beginning of the OSDU forum in 2019. INT made IVAAP available as part of the Demo release of the OSDU platform. The OSDU is a standard data platform for the oil and gas industry which will reduce silos and put data at the center of the subsurface community.

Integrating Powerful Map Capabilities into Your Subsurface Web Applications

Map-based search is an integral part of subsurface data visualization. In order to meet usability expectations, developers of subsurface applications in the cloud must add powerful map and map-based search functionalities. The GeoToolkit map widget simplifies the process, allowing users to get quick and clear insights using common web mapping services.

INT Adds Client SDK and Improves Seismic and Subsurface Visualization Performance with Latest Release of IVAAP 2.6

This release confirms IVAAP as a leader in the subsurface data visualization space, supporting Data Visualization and Data Management for Subsurface, Exploration, Drilling, or Production Applications in the cloud. Houston, TX — INT is pleased to announce the newest release of its HTML5 upstream visualization platform, IVAAP™ 2.6, accelerating the pace of our release cycle […]

Weatherford, INT Expand Collaboration to Create 2D, 3D Real-Time Well Visualization

Weatherford International plc (OTC Pink: WFTLF) announced a strengthened collaboration with upstream data visualization provider INT to provide next-level, real-time well visualization in both 2D and 3D. Weatherford will embed INT’s IVAAP framework into the Weatherford Centro™ digital well delivery software, advancing its data visualization capabilities.

Jumpstart the Development of Your Next Cloud Application with GeoToolkit.JS and INTGeoServer

INT has been a long-time pioneer by providing JavaScript components that empower developers to build geoscience applications that run in a browser. The GeoToolkit.JS libraries cut years of development time for any company creating a new application or replacing a legacy system. However, the added value of this kind of application is not just in accessing and visualizing geoscience data, it’s also in the integration of the company’s knowledge within this application.

Optimizing 3D Subsurface Web Applications with GeoToolkit

Despite the advantages of 3D rendering and the trend of migrating applications to web browsers, there are various obstacles that developers have to face and overcome. The steep learning curve, the insufficient cross-platform support, and the difficulty of maintaining make WebGL a beast to work with. In a way, we want to keep the obstacles away from web developers, so INT provides Carnac3D, a subset of GeoToolkit, as an industry-leading graphical product.

INT Brings OpenVDS Java Binding to the OSDU Community

Recently, INT announced our partnership with Bluware and our integration of Bluware’s OpenVDS format into IVAAP, our enterprise data visualization platform. We are very excited about this partnership, as well as our collaboration with OSDU. This new format was designed to empower users to browse seismic data in the cloud with high performance and lower cost.

Interactive Network Technologies, Inc. (INT) Integrates Bluware Corp. Volume Data Store (VDS) into IVAAP

Interactive Network Technologies, Inc. (INT) a leader in advanced domain visualization in digital exploration and production (E&P) and Bluware Corp., the digital platform that enables the oil and gas industry to accelerate digital transformation initiatives and adopt cloud computing for subsurface data, are pleased to announce the integration of Volume Data Store (VDS), a data format with adaptive streaming technology for seismic data storage, into IVAAP, an upstream data visualization platform. 

GeoToolkit 2020: Top New Features

GeoToolkit is a suite of 2D and 3D data visualization libraries that display well log, seismic, contour, schematics, BHA, maps, and more in JavaScript. Released earlier this year, GeoToolkit.JS 2020 comes with various new features and significant improvements. Highlights from the latest release include: improved ArcGIS support, faster load times, new tools, multilateral schematics, new gridding algorithms, and improved memory for volumetric rendering.

INT’s Leading Upstream Data Visualization Platform, IVAAP 2.5, Gets Major Update in Latest Release

INT is pleased to announce the latest release of its enterprise upstream visualization platform, IVAAP™ 2.5.

This version includes new production dashboards to enhance analysis and monitoring. Support for curve dictionaries and aliases makes it easier to build powerful log templates. IVAAP now fully supports the display of raster logs in well and correlation views (with support for TGS SmartRASTER® format).

Top 5 Overlooked Shortcuts in INTViewer

Feedback is key to the improvement of any software. INTViewer has many long-time users, and one piece of feedback that I sometimes receive is that “it takes too many clicks to reach an often-used feature.” Fortunately, with many years of real-world usage under its belt, the usability of INTViewer has been fine-tuned. These “missing” shortcuts are already built-in, I just didn’t do a good job communicating these improvements to our users. So here is our list of the 5 most overlooked INTViewer shortcuts.

A Countdown of INTViewer’s Features for the Cloud

2019 has been a year full of milestones. INT celebrated its 30 years and has made IVAAP available to all members of the OSDU consortium as part its demo release. But this year has seen many more achievements, and among them is the consolidation of INT products as a complete ecosystem, an ecosystem centered around geoscience data, built for the cloud.

Bluware and Interactive Network Technologies, Inc. (INT) Secure Strategic Partnership

Bluware Corp., the digital innovation platform for seismic data, is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Interactive Network Technologies, Inc. (INT), a leader in multi-domain visualization in exploration and production (E&P). Bluware and INT are early members in the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU), a forum focused on developing a standard that creates a common data platform for all exploration, development, and well data. The standard will transform the way subsurface data is captured, analyzed, and operated.

5 Simple Techniques to Avoid Bugs While Programming

Programming is an activity that requires a special set of cognitive skills. While the industry has developed processes and tools to ensure the quality of software artifacts, the act of writing code is a craft in itself. Developers pride themselves on the “big picture” results they achieve, but the activity of programming is definitely a humbling experience: it’s easy to introduce bugs, and regardless of whether I catch them right away or later in the pipeline, I hate to be reminded I am inherently flawed and have introduced a defect. For this article, I will focus on simple methods to avoid bugs, not before or after you write code, but while you write that code.

The Right Tools to Develop with the IVAAP Backend SDK

One of the unique features of the IVAAP backend SDK is that you can develop your own data connectors and services with the IDE you are already familiar with. The data backbone of IVAAP is meant to be deployed in a cluster made of multiple nodes for scalability and reliability. However, despite the distributed nature of such a deployment, our SDK requires no particular plugin to compile or execute your code. The tools needed to develop a plugin for IVAAP’s backend are identical to the tools you would need to develop classic Java Servlets: a Java SDK (Oracle, OpenJDK), an IDE (Eclipse, NetBeans) and an application server (Tomcat, Glassfish).

A Brief Demo of Machine Learning Applied to Subsurface Data in the Cloud

Over the last few months, there have been a lot of activities and discussions with upstream majors on how to make subsurface data easier to search and discover and how to automate some of the geophysical and/or petrophysical workflows. This process has typically been very challenging. From a user experience perspective, the ideal scenario would be to do this from one system versus doing this very manually from current siloed applications. We’ve been able to do this successfully here at INT.

How Window Synchronization Facilitates Visualization of a Large Number of Datasets

While some customers will use the portability of INTViewer to present their data, others will use INTViewer on a workstation, with multiple monitors. And instead of opening a handful of windows, they will open a few dozen. The typical use case for opening a large number of windows is when you want to monitor the multiple steps of a processing workflow. In such a use case where datasets are compared, it’s important that all visualizations share the same settings. INTViewer makes it really easy to open dozens of datasets at once. You can select a directory and open in one click all the datasets within that directory. But this is not where INTViewer’s productivity stops. Automatic synchronization facilitates the management of all these windows.

Using Scopes in IVAAP: Smart Caching and Other Benefits for Developers

The purpose of IVAAP’s backend is to access data from many data sources and present this data in a unified manner to the IVAAP HTML5 client. Performance is key, and some data stores are faster to access than others. In a web service configuration, a smart caching strategy is required so that the same web/HTTP calls are not made to the same data store twice while a service request is being fulfilled, regardless of its complexity. This is where the concept of scope comes in.

My Experience at INT with IVAAP: A First Look as a Developer

As a new member of the software development team, I had no prior experience with development on IVAAP, INT’s HTML5 visualization framework for upstream E&P solutions. My first task was to add a data connector, so to gain knowledge of IVAAP and to understand more about the IVAAP software development kit, I used the IVAAP developer’s guide. I found this guide quite useful as it made the key points behind IVAAP easily understandable. Coding with IVAAP is actually easy, and I was surprised by several features of the platform and SDK that make it quite simple to learn.

Using INTViewer to Visualize Earthquakes and Other Seismic Activity

I often have a hard time explaining to friends and family what exactly INTViewer does. The moment I use the word “seismic,” the listener’s mind automatically shifts to the topics of seismic activity and earthquakes, and I need to explain oil & gas exploration technologies before I even get to the software. By then, I have lost my audience. Today, I’ll try a different technique: I’ll describe the capabilities of INTViewer that actually cater to earthquake mapping. I will show how you can use the built-in capabilities of INTViewer to map recent earthquake activities.

5 Ways INTViewer Makes Offline Visualization Possible

I often say that INTViewer is a bit of Swiss knife. It serves multiple purposes, and each company finds a different use. This makes it hard to decide which feature to highlight. In the past few years, as the industry moved to the cloud, we created a companion for INTViewer: INTGeoServer, which makes it easy to visualize data beyond the bounds of your network. This year, with the new release of INTViewer approaching, I will highlight the opposite feature of INTViewer: its ability to work offline, disconnected from the world.

How the NetBeans Module System Helps Us Maintain Compatibility Between Releases

Two decades after its creation, the Java runtime has finally become modular. A modular approach not only makes dependency management easier, but it also makes applications more efficient as unused modules don’t need to be loaded. The NetBeans Platform predates Java 9 and has been using its own module system for years. Since INTViewer is a desktop application built on top of the NetBeans Platform, I find that it is far superior to the Java 9 module system for my use cases.

What Cloud Data Lakes Mean for Geoscience

With the explosion of storage capacity, cloud computing, and bandwidth availability, a trend has emerged in the oil and gas industry over the last few years. Data that was previously aggregated and discarded is now maintained and stored, creating an opportunity for the industry. Coupled with new advancements in machine learning and Al, this data availability is poised to drive more data driven decision making in well planning, drilling & completions, and well operations.

Simplifying the Learning Curve of the Seismic Unix Library

INTViewer provides a graphical user interface for the SU library, reducing the learning curve. The Seismic Workbench is a free plugin that has the documentation for the SU library built in, making it easy to find a particular command and all the parameters that this command requires. INTViewer builds the full command line for you based upon all individual commands selected.

How to Create Interactive Slideshows (VIDEO)

Presenting data to clients regularly poses many challenges, especially considering that today’s datasets are more likely to exceed a petabyte or more. Slideshows that may take hours to create are often instantly obsolete and frequently don’t fully answer your clients’ questions. With one simple plugin, INTViewer transforms the art of showing data to your clients by combining the simplicity of a slideshow and the power of live data.

3 NetBeans Shortcuts to Help You Be More Productive

I have been using NetBeans daily for about 8 years, so I’d say I am pretty familiar … with the features I use all the time. Over the years, friends and colleagues have shown me that there are faster ways to get the job done. I have gathered in this post three shortcuts that I learned from others and that you can also use when you develop an INTViewer plugin.

Accessing INTViewer Remotely

In our blog post on Microsoft Azure, we describe various ways customers can move their data to the cloud. In the configuration where INTViewer is hosted on a remote server and needs to be accessed from a local workstation, a Teradici client is one solution. These configurations are increasingly popular with our customers. For performance […]

Picking Horizons in INTViewer 5.2

Horizon picking is a feature that INTViewer has included from the start. However, after discussing with several long-time users, I have found that the evolutions brought by each release can be missed. The release of INTViewer 5.2 is a good opportunity to tour basic picking options. First, a bit of terminology. The term “horizon” in […]

Overlaying Shape Files on Seismic Surveys

In our post, “Closer Look at Coordinate Conversions,” we allude to the capabilities of INTViewer with coordinate system conversions. One benefit of on-the-fly conversions is the ability to see your seismic data in context. In the example below, a time slice is reprojected to the coordinate system used by Google Maps.     Showing satellite […]

New Window System for INTViewer 5.2

If you are already a user of INTViewer, the first thing you will certainly notice when you open INTViewer 5.2 for the first time is the new window system. The way windows are laid out on screen has changed, introducing tabs to browse through these windows.

A Closer Look at Coordinate Conversions

INTViewer makes coordinate conversions virtually transparent to users. Users pick two Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS), one for their data and one for the visualization map, and the visualization updates automatically. How does INTViewer do it? The short answer is “it depends”. The long answer is that the strategy used varies based upon the CRSs selected, […]

Extend INTViewer with Java

INTViewer provides many features off-the-shelf, but its extensibility is unique. Developers can customize numerous aspects of INTViewer by extending the INTViewer platform. And one way to extend this platform is to write Java plugins.

Microsoft Azure + INTViewer

The cloud is not just a set of computing resources hosting web based-applications. Microsoft Azure can also be used to host what we know today as desktop PCs. Constant availability and unlimited storage are just two of the numerous advantages of hosting your PC on the cloud.

Introducing the Normalization Widget

The Normalization widget is one of the new tools in INTViewer 5.2. It shows graphically how your current selection relates to the minimum and maximum amplitudes of the entire dataset. There are several normalization options in INTViewer: RMS, Maximum, Limits, etc.