CF does a great job on describing datasets for general usage. But CF leaves a gap on discovery metadata for data catalogs. Chapter 2.6.2 describes some, but not all parameters required by popular Discovery Metadata-specifications like ISO19115 or DIF. This lead to several CF-extensions, e.g.
* John Carons: Dataset Inventory Catalog Specification Version: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/InvCatalogSpec.html#controlledVocabulary * Ethan Davis': NetCDF Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/formats/DataDiscoveryAttConvention.html * Damocles (IPY) File specification http://damocles.met.no/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=documentation:start&cache=cache&media=documentation:deliverable_6_1_02b-metno.pdf (chapter 6) * others, e.g. adding a global attribute containing a ISO19115 metadata xml-string. The Dataset Inventory Catalog tells us to add discovery metadata to external files, which is a bit against the netcdf-philosophy of bundling metadata with the files. The other two examples add additional global attributes to the files, which might lead to conflicts between (future) CF versions and the added attributes. CF should either include those attributes, or allow for a namespace for an external document, i.e. following the NetCDF Attribute Convention for DatasetDiscovery, adding a global attribute 'Metadata_Conventions' = '...', and then all attribute starting with i.e. with 'MC_' should be directed to the Metadata_Conventions parser. Best regards, Heiko -- Dr. Heiko Klein Tel. + 47 22 96 32 58 Development Section / IT Department Fax. + 47 22 69 63 55 Norwegian Meteorological Institute http://www.met.no P.O. Box 43 Blindern 0313 Oslo NORWAY _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
