Here's another attempt to meet everyone's criteria. Any comments?
platform_primary_id: variable of character type containing an ID or name
of an observing station or other platform
platform_primary_id_authority: variable of character type, specifying
the naming authority or system used to choose platform_primary_id
platform_secondary_id: variable of character type containing a second ID
or name of an observing station or other platform. platform_primary_id
must be present.
platform_secondary_id_authority: variable of character type, specifying
the naming authority or system used to choose platform_secondary_id
platform_description: variable of character type which describes an
observing station or other platform
Regarding the change from (platform_name, platform_id) to
(platform_primary_id, platform_secondary_id): Character IDs seem to be
common, and Jonathan suggested that numeric IDs wouldn't really be
treated as numbers. So I think it makes sense to use only character
type. But we still need two of them, per Nan's comment. With two IDs
we need two naming authorities.
I purposely didn't try to write detailed specifications of how to
express the naming authority or format the description. I think there's
no hope of getting a consensus on that until we have at least settled on
the names.
- Jeff
On 9/6/11 6:29 AM, Schultz, Martin wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:33:26 +0100
>> From: Jonathan Gregory<j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>
>> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] standard names for stations
>> Dear Nan
>>
>>> Do we need to specify whether the _id is numeric or character? I'd
>>> prefer to leave that to the user and his code.
>> Yes, I think we have to specify this for standard_names; in the standard
>> name table, all of them are either assigned units => numeric, or stated to be
>> "string". Of course, a number can be written in a string, and maybe that's the
>> right thing to do if this variable would never be processed as a number.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> ... but strings may be formatted differently. "001" is not the same as "1" or "01". I think you are right about using strings instead of numbers (if sometimes the ID can actually be a string), but someone (in the user community) then needs to define the formatting of number IDs.
>
> Martin
>
>
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Received on Wed Sep 14 2011 - 17:25:32 BST
