20010228: NEXRAD Level III data display in McIDAS-X (cont.)

>From: alan anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 200102202133.f1KLXZL10511 McIDAS NEXRAD display

Alan,

re: setup ADDE dataset

>OK,  sounds reasonable.  My initial thought was to leave the data on one
>terminal, the one the student will use, and access it as a local dataset.

Since any system running McIDAS can be setup to serve data through a
remote ADDE server, any one of your machines could be setup to serve
the data to all of your other machines.

>My idea was to prevent any additional traffic onto waldo (our ADDE server),
>but perhaps this is not an important issue.  

It would simply depend on how loaded waldo is.  If it is totally maxed
out then I would recommend hosting the NIDS data on a different
machine.  If it is not, I would host the dataset on it.

>Regarding waldo, I am a bit behind with it in terms of ldm upgrades as it 
>is still running ver. 5.0 (I think).

Sounds like it is time for an upgrade.  I would do this when when you
get a chance and when things quite down.  If you are not having
problems, then I wouldn't jump into this until there is a break.

>Also, am not sure about the version of
>McIDAS-XCD decoders.  I know you updated these once for us, but I am sure no
>changes have been made since last year (summer?), and any decoders unique to 
>NIDS data are not likely to be there.

There is no decoding needed for the NIDS data.  McIDAS-X can serve the
data directly.  You should, however, make sure to upgrade to the latest
McIDAS-X release and addendum to make sure that the data is served
correctly.

>From your message above, I assume 
>the data needs to first be run through decoder software before MCIDAS can 
>"view" it.

No, this is not the case.

>I assume we need the latest McIDAS version (7xx) to do this.

Yes, there are a number of changes in the latest McIDAS version.  The
most significant ones allow serving the compressed NIDS data from
NOAAPORT directly.

>I have been doing 'make all ' when  building McIDAS, but have not been 
>setting up an ADDE server on our individual terminals as waldo does that.

OK.  That is easily done as 'root', but you may just need to setup the
appropriate dataset(s) on waldo.

>We have the first samples of data from NCDC.  They were ftp'd across, as 
>.tar.gz files.  Have unpacked them but nothing more.

OK.

>Let me know about the decoder issue and whether waldo's ldm status is 
>a potential problem.  

The state of the LDM on waldo will not affect the serving of NIDS
data.  The version of McIDAS-X on waldo, however, will.  I think that
the first thing to do is decided exactly which machine you want to
serve the NIDS data from and then upgrade its version of McIDAS to the
latest addendum.  If this turns out to be waldo, you will have to
address a couple of other things along the way.  The most significant
of this is the change to the upper air decoding that now files
observations up to 10 mb.  This is addressed in the Release Notes
section of the McIDAS-X 7.7 web pages.  If you want some help doing the
upgrade, please let me know.

Tom