[CF-metadata] stations and trajectories

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 09:12:04 +0100

Dear John

I don't think we can arrange unique station names unless we define or point
to a list of them somehow. Should we do this?

> this has a good feel to it, you could elaborate on this like:
>
> float measure1( record);
> :coordinates = "time lat lon elev station";
> double time( record);
> double lat( record);
> double lon( record);
> double elev( record);
> int station( record);

This is like storing all the timeseries in a single SQL table, when you would
extract the timeseries for a particular station using
  select time,measure1 where station=something;
Is that how you did it in SQL, Magi?

I understand you would like to do it like this in order not to have many
variables and I agree this is a possible method. But why is it preferable to
having many variables? Is it because it is easier to search through a variable
to find a particular value (of station, for instance) than it is to search
through a number of variables to identify the one you want? If that's the
reason there might be other approaches we could think of.

> Another step would be to factor out the station information, so its not
> redundantly stored:

I don't like this so much because it makes it more opaque.

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Sun Jun 12 2005 - 02:12:04 BST