Suggest "variable of character type containing a unique identifier (may be numeric, name, or URI) of an observing station or platform"
Because the primary_id has to be unique to be a useful ID. I could tolerate duplicate names for the secondary ID, personally.
And 'observing station or other platform' implied observing station IS a platform, but some observing stations ("M1" at MBARI) are conceptual, being populated by a sequence of actual physical platforms.
Otherwise, I like. Also is smart to let the practice of specifying the authority evolve. Sooner or later we'll have a formal vocabulary, *then* CF can be modified to insist upon the formal vocabulary, if there is support for that. (You could specify the naming authority for the vocabulary used to specify the naming authority ... ;->)
John
On Sep 14, 2011, at 16:25, Jeffrey F. Painter wrote:
> 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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John Graybeal <mailto:jgraybeal at ucsd.edu>
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Received on Wed Sep 14 2011 - 22:47:14 BST
