Dear @oceandatalab I think that allowing data variables to refer to the domain with a single reference _instead_ of providing the domain information by various references on the data variable would be a drastic change to the convention. Although not backwards incompatible in the sense that it wouldn't invalidate existing conventions or data, it would require all software to be rewritten to support this different method. I think that would be a bad decision. Alllowing a domain reference _in addition_ to the other means of describing the domain by the data variable would be redundant, and therefore potentially inconsistent, which also doesn't sound good to me.
I understand your argument that you want to use the domain reference as a way to identify the domain uniquely, but I would argue that you can't really depend on that method. It will only work within a single file (within which one can depend on variable names as references) and netCDF datasets aren't necessarily contained in single files. Hence you still need to be able to decide whether domains are equal by inspecting the metadata and coordinates. You would have to be able to do that also if assembling a dataset from various sources. Best wishes Jonathan -- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/301#issuecomment-718145766 This list forwards relevant notifications from Github. It is distinct from [email protected], although if you do nothing, a subscription to the UCAR list will result in a subscription to this list. To unsubscribe from this list only, send a message to [email protected].
