Hello Jim,
Just a note to affirm that the gradualist approach you recommend below
seems the natural to me. Settle the meanings of groups and scope first.
This is the foundation.
If the foundation seems solid, then take-on the definition of specific
group-aware metadata features aimed at exploiting relationships among
groups (like the "ensemble" feature type I described), rather than using
them purely as containers.
c
Le 17/09/2013 06:51, Jim Biard a ?crit :
> Hi.
>
> I strongly support the idea of adding groups to CF. As a data producer
> and consumer, I vastly prefer to have collections of similar items
> grouped together rather than laying about in a single large bin. (I
> also make extensive use of folders on my computer!) I am currently
> building netCDF-4 files that use groups, which allows me to produce
> single files instead of groups of 35 files. As attractive as the
> thought of "containerless data" (clouds of fully self-described,
> individual variables floating in cyberspace) is, I find that a
> significant database system is required to make that functional. When
> such a system is available, variables can be as easily presented from
> files containing groups as from files that don't. When such as system
> isn't available, groups help unaided human brains grasp the organization
> of the data. That's why the hierarchical file system has been such a
> success. (And I admit, this is colored by my own particular biases. I
> like to sort my email into folders, even sub-folders. I use search when
> I need to, but I find it much quicker to go to the folder where I am
> more likely to find what I'm looking for.)
>
> I also agree that we should take a gradualist approach. If we
> conceptually treat groups as files, allow for the concept of inheritance
> of dimensions (which is native to netCDF-4) and attributes (which would
> be a CF convention), and stop there for now, I think we can then wrestle
> with more complex topics as they come along.
>
> Grace and peace,
>
> Jim
>
> CICS-NC <http://www.cicsnc.org/>Visit us on
> Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/cicsnc> *Jim Biard*
> *Research Scholar*
> Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites NC <http://cicsnc.org/>
> North Carolina State University <http://ncsu.edu/>
> NOAA's National Climatic Data Center <http://ncdc.noaa.gov/>
> 151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801
> e: jim.biard at noaa.gov <mailto:jim.biard at noaa.gov>
> o: +1 828 271 4900
--
Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci.
University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'(
Received on Tue Sep 17 2013 - 15:02:08 BST
