Hi all -
I'm in the process of implementing Ethan Davis' Attribute Convention
for Dataset Discovery, and am assuming that CF will "honor" the terms
in that convention by not using them -with different meanings - in CF.
It occurs to me that that assumption might be a little flimsy, though, so
I thought I'd ask here.
Are the terms in the Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery going
to be "protected" from being used in CF with different definitions?
I'm certain that the CF terms won't be used by ACDD, since there are
links to the CF standard in that specification.
Are others using the ACDD? And, do you know if there's a forum for
discussing that convention? I have some issues with the temporal-geospatial
resolution attribute, and OceanSITES also has some synonymous terms
and some slightly different ways of organizing things like file creation
dates and roles of individuals, and I'm not sure where to air those
concerns.
This issue has been raised before (most recently, I think, by Heiko Klein
on January 22, 'Discovery metadata for CF?') however there hasn't been
any forward movement on a namespace system, as far as I know. Pending
a decision about how to indicate which term belongs to which vocabulary,
I'm assuming it's best to just make sure there are no common terms with
different definitions in the conventions I'm using.
Thanks!
- Nan
On 1/22/10 5:34 AM, Heiko Klein wrote:
> CF does a great job on describing datasets for general usage. But CF
> leaves a gap on discovery metadata for data catalogs. Chapter 2.6.2
> describes some, but not all parameters required by popular Discovery
> Metadata-specifications like ISO19115 or DIF. This lead to several
> CF-extensions, e.g.
>
> * John Carons: Dataset Inventory Catalog Specification Version:
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/InvCatalogSpec.html#controlledVocabulary
> * Ethan Davis': NetCDF Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/formats/DataDiscoveryAttConvention.html
> * Damocles (IPY) File specification
> http://damocles.met.no/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=documentation:start&cache=cache&media=documentation:deliverable_6_1_02b-metno.pdf
> (chapter 6)
> * others, e.g. adding a global attribute containing a ISO19115 metadata
> xml-string.
>
> The Dataset Inventory Catalog tells us to add discovery metadata to
> external files, which is a bit against the netcdf-philosophy of bundling
> metadata with the files. The other two examples add additional global
> attributes to the files, which might lead to conflicts between (future)
> CF versions and the added attributes.
>
>
> CF should either include those attributes, or allow for a namespace for
> an external document, i.e. following the NetCDF Attribute Convention for
> DatasetDiscovery, adding a global attribute 'Metadata_Conventions' =
> '...', and then all attribute starting with i.e. with 'MC_' should be
> directed to the Metadata_Conventions parser.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Heiko
>
>
--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith (508) 289-2444 *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 *
*******************************************************
Received on Thu Jul 01 2010 - 12:41:51 BST
