Hi Stephen,

I also advocate keeping support for groups simple.
The simplest support imaginable is that groups should be completely
self-contained without attribute inheritance. This would go in the
right direction, yet I think attribute inheritance, at least of global
metadata, ought to be strongly considered. Otherwise useful attributes
like "history" and "Convention" have to be stored in each group....

cz


Le 17/09/2013 04:56, [email protected] a écrit :
> Bryan has beaten me to the points I would have made. I think hierarchies are 
> over rated at the interface level. Examples abound of where they have been 
> abandoned: hierarchal vs relational DBs, XML databases and tools (save us 
> from xquery for Netcdf!).
> 
> Under the hood hierarchies are often necessary for scalability and we all use 
> them as a crutch when no better tools exist.
> 
> I would advocate keeping support for groups very simple. CF could treat any 
> netcdf file containing groups as if it was a directory of netcdf files with 
> attached metadata. IMO complex rules about inter-group relationships should 
> be avoided. I guess attribute inheritance must be an exception here but I 
> would urge caution. One of the CF data model tickets has got a detailed 
> debate on interpretation of the current standard regarding variable 
> attributes overriding global attributes. Lessons from that should be learned.
> 
> Stephen.
> 
> --
> Stephen Pascoe from iPhone
> 


-- 
Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci.
University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'(
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