[CF-metadata] Conventions (vs. Community Profiles), and CF-checker

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 16:04:41 +0100

Dear John

> i think the common use case is this: a group already has their data using
> their own convention, possibly even documented(!). now they want to get on
> the CF bandwagon so they are going to try to be CF compliant without
> breaking their existing software. I dont see how we can disallow that,
> since CF explicitly allows other metadata. if there are conflicts, then I
> agree this should not be allowed. it does argue for us to resolve the
> namespace problem, eg CF:attname = value.

I suppose that if there are no conflicts, then you can actually regard it as
a subconvention. That is, the group accepts all of CF, and adds some more
(whether restrictions or new facilities). In that case, the / syntax could
be used. I can see that this is a bit imperialist, in that it requires the
group to label CF as their main convention, but it does have the advantage
of not requiring any new syntax, just what the netCDF user guide allows.

Cheers

Jonathan
Received on Thu Sep 03 2009 - 09:04:41 BST