Dear Daniel I assume you mean a data variable which has strings describing quality or status states, probably encoded with flag_values and flag_meanings. Would the flag_meanings be meaningful to a human reading them? If so, you could regard the file as self-describing. Self-describing doesn't have to mean self-documenting, I would say. Standard names are self-explanatory to some extent, and make the file self-describing, but they also have definitions which aren't in the file, and papers in the peer-reviewed literature about the quantities. If the flag_meanings are self-explanatory, I think that's OK, but I'm not in favour of putting codes in the CF-netCDF file.
Best wishes Jonathan ----- Forwarded message from Daniel Neumann <[email protected]> ----- > Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 14:45:33 +0200 > From: Daniel Neumann <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: [CF-metadata] PID to external description of Quality and Status > states > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 > Thunderbird/60.8.0 > > Dear list, > > A CF-conformal NetCDF file should be as self-describing as possible. > URIs/PIDs poitining to external data sources are problematic in this > context. However, IDs pointing to external data sources were already > discussed for taxa in the CF Trac Ticket #99 "Taxon Names and > Identifiers" (https://cf-trac.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/99). > > Let's assume we have a long description of quality control measures > performed resulting in N possible quality states for a NetCDF > variable. The full description could be part of a peer-reviewed > paper or grey literature (with assigned PID). However, it is too > long to be included in the attribute "description" of the > quality/status flag variable. One solution would be to add a brief > description of the quality states to the quality_flag/status_flag > variable and point to the external full description via it's PID. > > What is your opinion on this? > > This is not a request for a feature but rather meant to collect some > opinions on this topic. It is somehow related to the request of a > global PID attribute in CF GitHub Issue 160 "Add attribute > citation_id" > (https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/160). > > Regards, > Daniel > > > -- > Dr. Daniel Neumann > Abteilung Datenmanagement > > Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum GmbH (DKRZ) > Bundesstraße 45 a • D-20146 Hamburg • Germany > > Phone: +49 40 460094-120 > Email: [email protected] > URL: www.dkrz.de > > Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Thomas Ludwig > Sitz der Gesellschaft: Hamburg > Amtsgericht Hamburg HRB 39784 > > > _______________________________________________ > CF-metadata mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata ----- End forwarded message ----- _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
