  The near-term objectives of the research program at the Data Analysis Center
are established within the context of the existing partial wave analyses
available through the online suite of analysis and database codes accessible
through SAID, the Scattering Analysis Interactive Database. This presentation
reviews the efforts to determine a model independent method to obtain sets of
partial wave amplitudes for strong and electromagnetic reactions, the
interpretation of the amplitudes in terms of the excited states of the nucleon,
the role of new precision unpolarized and polarized data, and new developments
aimed at determining the photoproduction mulitpoles in a unitary,
coupled-channel approach. The Chew-Mandelstam technique is discussed and
applied to the problem of the S-wave pion- and eta-photoproduction amplitudes.
The resulting eta production amplitudes exhibit the expected resonant behavior
near the eta production threshold. Application of this method to a unified
description of the hadro- and photoproduction amplitudes is discussed.
