Research in Heliophysics requires information from multiple sources which includes data from
and about spacecrafts, groundbased observatories, models, simulations and more. The
results from research are also invaluable in building up a body of knowledge and need to be
available. All the different sources and types of information are considered a "Resource". The
Resources exist, are shared, exchanged and used in a framework called the "data
environment". The SPASE (Space Physics Archive Search and Extract) group has defined a
Data Model which is a set of terms and values along with the relationships between them that
allow describing all the resources in a heliophysics data environment. It is the result of many
years of effort by an international collaboration of heliophysicists and information scientists to
unify and improve on existing Space and Solar Physics data models. The intent of this Data
Model is to provide the means to describe resources, most importantly scientifically useful
data products, in a uniform way so they may be easily registered, found, accessed, and used.

The Data Model provides enough detail to allow a scientist to understand the content of Data
Products (e.g., a set of files for 3 second resolution Geotail magnetic field data for1992 to
2005), together with essential retrieval and contact information. It also allows for the
incremental annotation of resources with expert assessments and the free association of
resources to create bundles or networks of resources. Resource descriptions can be stored
with the data or at remote locations. Sites can harvest the resource descriptions to enable
services like a search engine or portal (Virtual Observatory). A typical use would be to have a
collection of descriptions stored in one or more related internet-based registries of products;
that can be queried with specifically designed search engines and ultimately link users to the
data they need. The Data Model also provides constructs for describing components of such
a data delivery system. This includes repositories, registries and services.