Historically, pedologists, armed with shovel, map, color book, and notepad, conducted their work in relative isolation using low-tech methods.  High-tech tools including computers, GIS, and pedon entry and analysis programs are now available to the field pedologist.  Simultaneously, their method of survey has evolved into the Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) concept in which the pedologist works across county and state boundaries with pedologists in adjoining MLRA offices.  Desktop systems do not adequately address data entry, analysis, and dissemination needs for the new type of soil survey office, in part due to the need for a soil scientist to develop a high degree of expertise in programming, and in part due to the difficultly in data exchange and synchronization of highly complex pedon database structures.  The Cooperative Soil Survey website (CSS) is developing an internet-based system that allows the user to classify pedons with advanced, user-friendly tools using soil descriptive properties and associated laboratory analyses.  The certified pedon data is then used to correlate and characterize map units and to produce a new generation of data-driven interpretations.  The processes being developed at the CSS will lead to increasingly dynamic, quantified, and data driven soil survey products sought by the National Cooperative Soil Survey.