Right now, there’s a data set we want that’s distributed exclusively on Earth Engine. So, to break it into manageable/meaningful chunks for our analysis, we’ve created regions. We basically need to generate the raster (requires a “max” function for the time period of interest) for each year, and then clip the raster to each region and download it. All of this is exclusively done in the JavaScript IDE on the site.
Already, some data distribution hurdles for this platform are identified (to its credit, it sort of isn’t built for that purpose; it has many other strengths, i.e. actually being able to do processing). Possibly one of the funkiest things about Earth Engine is the distinction (and difference in how it’s coded) between “client-side” and “server-side” functions. So, whenever you make something “ee.” it’s server side: it means that the server is processing whatever it is into the thing you want. So, you have to deal with the resulting objects differently depending on what “side” you’re on.