Dapper in-situ conventions spec available

[Peter Cornillon]

I agree with Joe, that this list is a good place for this discussion.  
If people start to object we can, as Joe suggests, move the  
discussion elsewhere. Thanks Joe for putting this together.

Peter

On Oct 5, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Joe Sirott wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> This list seems (at least to me) to be a reasonable place to have  
> this discussion. Why don't you go ahead and forward your comments?  
> If there are then objections to having the discussion on this  
> mailing list we can set up a different forum...
>
> - Joe
>
> John Caron wrote:
>> Hi Joe, et al:
>>
>> We have some various comments on this. Im wondering if you would  
>> prefer to have a seperate conversation on a possible new version  
>> of the spec, or just discuss the spec as it stands? I guess im  
>> wondering if this is the place to have the discussion Steve  
>> Hankins suggested:
>>
>> (Steve's original email)
>>
>> I'm seeking your thoughts here are on how the community can move  
>> rapidly towards the development of a written specification for the  
>> 2-level Sequence representation in OPeNDAP. (I'll refer to this  
>> below as the "DAP-2LS" conventions.)  It looks like the time may  
>> be right next year for pretty rapid growth in the use of OPeNDAP  
>> for conveying in-situ data.  Funding will probably be available  
>> for efforts along these lines.  A written specification is needed  
>> if the community is to take full advantage of these opportunities.
>>
>> Between the DAPPER server and GDS there are successful example  
>> implementations to work from.  Many of the details of the  
>> specification (e.g. encoding of time) can probably be borrowed  
>> from CF.  The emerging PyDAP work promises to bring relational  
>> databases into the fold, too.
>>
>> Clearly funding may be needed to entice someone to take on this  
>> task.  I believe that we can find a source of those funds in NOAA  
>> if we act quickly.  Even if only an initial, draft specification  
>> were to be developed at this time -- with community comments and  
>> discussion left to follow later -- this would be an important  
>> contribution.  Multiple venues for community discussion of CF- 
>> related conventions are taking form.  One at Unidata (by  
>> September?) will host discussions about unstructured grid (finite  
>> element) conventions.  Another at LLNL is getting started now to  
>> press forward with the CF conventions for more complex curvilinear  
>> grids.  With an initial specification of DAP-2LS conventions in  
>> hand I imagine we can entice someone to host a community  
>> discussion, since access to observations is important to everyone.
>>
>>   - steve
>>
>> P.S. I am just cheer-leading this effort. I do not expect be  
>> directly involved, myself.  The pay-off to the community --  
>> advancing data interoperability, OPeNDAP, the Common Data Model,  
>> etc. etc. -- just seems too big to ignore. "

--
  Peter Cornillon
    Graduate School of Oceanography     -  Telephone: (401) 874-6283
       University of Rhode Island                 -                
Fax: (401) 874-6728
         Narragansett, RI 02882                    -           E- 
mail: pcornillon at gso.uri.edu

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