[CF-metadata] CF question

From: Bob Drach <drach>
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:03:55 -0700

All,

A question on CF arose in the context of the Earth System Grid project.
We've started to design a database for CF/NetCDF metadata, and are at
the point of developing an object model for the database. One of the
classes is GriddedVariable, that is, a variable defined on a spatial or
temporal grid. Station data and trajectories would not be considered as
GriddedVariables.

The question centers around how an application, say a metadata
harvesting utility, would recognize that a variable is gridded. One way
would be to check if the associated coordinate variable(s) have boundary
variables. But the concern was raised that CF data producers might opt
not to store boundary variables, either because it's unimportant for
their application or it's too much trouble. In such cases it would not
be possible to infer that the data was in fact gridded.

So the question is: should an application assume that a variable is
non-gridded if it is missing explicit boundary data? Or would it be
better to require that nongridded data be tagged in some fashion, with
the expectation that most CF data will be gridded, and infer that a
variable is gridded unless otherwise indicated?

Bob
Received on Tue Jun 18 2002 - 12:03:55 BST