Thanks Jonathan for expressing the essentials of this issue so concisely. I must admit I'd got lost in the volume of correspondance on the thread, not helped by my lack of modelling experience.
So, it comes down to 'do we need a new vocabulary or do we need to extend an existing one?'. To my way of thinking, a vocabulary is the tool we use for constraining the population of a metadata field. Good design is having a one-to-one mapping between vocabularies and fields. Therefore, if the ensemble descriptor is held in the same attribute as the parameter descriptor then we need to use the same vocabulary. If not, then a new vocabulary is needed.
I'm afraid my loose following of the thread means I don't know whether we're talking about one attribute or two, but hopefully those with that knowledge can map my comments to get my view on the overall issue.
Cheers, Roy.
>>> Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk> 12/11/2006 11:00 pm >>>
Dear all
> Finally, following Alison's summary posting and in agreement to Jamie's
> comment, if the standard name option is not going to be used to describe
> the metadata of the forecast systems and "ensembles" as a standard name
> issue is already closed, where do we stand now? Do we need to propose a
> list of names for the "standard_metadata" attribute? There are no
> external vocabularies available in the medium-range, monthly, seasonal
> and interannual forecasting communities.
I also feel that we haven't reached a satisfactory resolution of this. I
haven't had time properly to digest Alison's recent lengthy summary of many
issue (for which thanks) but I had the impression that there wasn't widespread
objection to adopting the four attribute names mentioned as standard names.
I can see that there could be a distinction to be made between standard_names
for physical quantities and non-physical categories, but I'm not convinced of
the need for it; I think introducing an alternative to standard_names, with a
very similar function, is unnecessary complexity in the standard. Did anyone
else have views on this issue?
We clearly need to agree how to conclude these debates. In the past, we have
attempted to achieve consensus, which comes about when any minorities are won
over by better arguments. This takes work. If we reach an impasse, we may have
to decide by majority, but in that case we can only do so when the alternatives
have been laid out and people invited to vote.
Best wishes
Jonathan
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Received on Tue Dec 12 2006 - 00:30:54 GMT
