OOPs, I forgot to send this yesterday, but some of it is still relevant:
On 1/3/11 11:35 AM, Rich Signell wrote:
Since most consumers use some kind of tool, I would says it's more a
question of whether there are more data providers or more CF-compliant
tool developers.
well, CF-compliant data providing tool developers or CF-compliant data
consuming tools developers... i.e. every ROMS user should not have to
worry about this, they hopefully have an "export as CF-compliant" option
that someone else has written for everyone.
And since many tool developers use NetCDF-Java
So exactly how much does NetCDF-Java do for you? Can I ask it for a
land-sea mask and it will look for the multiple ways that might be
stored and give it back to me? If so, pretty cool!
This has inspired me a bit -- as Unidata has focused development efforts
on NetCDF-JAVA, I'd like to see if I can build a Python wrapper for it,
so that I can get all that nifty stuff from Python. (Maybe a C++ one,
too). I don't when, if ever, I"ll get time to work on that, but it would
be pretty nifty.
or
some other package to enable CF compliance,
right -- again, more folks writing CF-compliant reader or writers? I
don't know. I'd guess more writers actually. In general, I think the
idea of the the readers is to be able to read from many sources (IDV,
GNOME, etc), The whole point of this is that there are many sources
writing the data that you want to read.
But perhaps the issue is not how many, but how much of a burden it is --
see my other note.
Do we want to add things to the standard to
make common, but not compliant, use cases compliant? Perhaps so.
I think "Perhaps so" is exactly right. The advantage of making it
easier for providers to standardize their datasets vs the additional
burden to CF-compliant tool developers.
yup -- standards do need to conform to existing standard practice if
they are to be used.
Which makes me wonder why land_binary_mask was originally chosen, but
there you go.
One more thought/question:
Is there any way to express, in the standard, the relationship between
two different ways of expressing the same information? i.e. a land mask
and sea mask express the same thing, the only difference is what "1"
means -- land or sea? That means that there should never be a file with
both in there, and that ideally the tools API would allow one to ask for
either land or sea and get what is wanted.
I'm trying to think of a parallel for this example -- I suppose it's a
bit like a unit:
for example, sea surface height in cm and in m is the same thing,
expressed in different units. land and sea binary mask is the same
thing, expressed in different units as well.
I don't know how you'd define that unit.
Anyway, I just searched the standard names table, and there are all of
two names with "binary" or "mask" in them, so this can hardly be seen as
name proliferation.
-Chris
--
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax
Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception
[email protected]
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