Russ Rew wrote:
> Another possibility to consider is the notation
>
> :Conventions = "A/B" ;
>
Aha, and thanks - I thought the recommended separator was a
comma - my mistake.
The question still remains whether CF might allow this, or if the
Conventions attribute must be a simple 'CF-2.4' to be compliant.
There is a certain benefit to putting all the conventions into one
attribute,
but I don't suppose this outweighs any potential for broken code. The
selection of a standard attribute name for community profiles seems like
a good second choice, with no down side for anyone. Of course we would
want it to be an optional attribute, since it would not apply to many
NetCDF
files.
Convention_profile would be nice from a parsing/programing point of
view, or Community_profile, for better human readability.
Thanks -
Nan
>> 1. It would be best not to "break" the CF conventions, so retaining
>> simply the unadorned Conventions = "CF-1.4" seems the best choice.
>> 2. You can pick any non-reserved attribute name that you want to
>> enable the OceanSites-specific software to detect the additional
>> conventions. There is a danger of future attribute name
>> collisions, and your specific community's software, alone, (I
>> assume?) has an interest in this attribute. So I'd suggest that
>> the attribute name you pick is quite specific to your needs. e.g.
>> * OceanSitesConventionsVersion = 1.0;
>>
>> ====
>> For the larger CF community we should consider whether there is value in
>> having a general sub-conventions attribute of the style that Derrick
>> proposed. His proposal was
>>
>> .Profile = "XBT-1.0" or .Community_Profile or whatever?
>>
>> If the growth of CF continues as we expect, then these issues are going
>> to be arising more often. In the end the extended family of CF datasets
>> will be cleaner and more intelligible if there is an identified
>> attribute that can be examined to identify what sub-conventions
>> (profile) were followed. To make such an attribute mandatory would
>> break a lot of existing files. But the attribute does seem worthy to be
>> stated as a "recommended attribute" in CF documentation.
>>
>> Should we open a trac ticket?
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>>
--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith (508) 289-2444 *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 *
*******************************************************
Received on Wed Sep 02 2009 - 09:02:51 BST
