We describe the NOAO Data Lab, a new science platform to efficiently utilize catalog, image and spectral data from large surveys in the era of LSST. Data Lab provides access (through multiple interfaces) to many current NOAO, public survey and external datasets to efficiently combine traditional telescope image/spectral data with external archives, share results and workflows with collaborators, experiment with analysis toolkits and publish science-ready results for community use. The architecture, science use-case approach to designing the system, its current capabilities and plans for community-based development of analysis tools and services are presented. Lessons learned in building and operating a science platform, challenges to interoperability with emerging platforms, and scalability issues for Big Data science are also discussed.
Link to PDF (may not be available yet): O5-1.pdf