[McIDAS #SXY-331778]: Unable to add historical wind profiler case study to ADDE server.

Hi Samuel,

re:
> The learning 
> guide(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/workshop/toc.htm) 
> is very
> useful, and the MCIDAS users's 
> guide(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/users_guide/DSSERVE.html#35904)
> are very specific about MD and NetCDF file formats, however there doesn't 
> seem to be clear instructions
> how to setup a NetCDF configuration file for METAR data,

You are correct.  The documentation for setting up serving of POINT/GRID data 
out of netCDF files
is lacking.

> or how to translate a NetCDF file to a METAR/MD form.

Correct again, but this time the reason is twofold:

- there is no netCDF to MDXX file conversion utility in McIDAS

- converting raw METAR data (in the form that is broadcast in NOAAPort and 
conveyed in the
  IDD IDS|DDPLUS datastream) is an activity of McIDAS-XCD decoders.  If you had 
all of
  the METAR data that you wanted to decode into McIDAS MD files available in 
broadcast
  format, you could setup a system where you could decode the data.  This would 
need to
  be done on a machine that is _not_ processing realtime data from an LDM.  The
  process would be mimic what is done for realtime data for your historic data 
and
  then rename the output MD files to something like we talked about previously.
 
> Because of this, I simply copied the file from the example netcdfpoint.cfg, 
> and used it in the
> following DSSERVE command:
> 
> DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/SFCHOUSTO NCDF TYPE=POINT 
> DIRFILE='/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/Surface_METAR*.nc' 
> INFO=/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/netcdfpnt.cfg "Real-Time 
> SFC Hourly Text - STO
> 
> Now when I try to show any data from this dataset, I get the following error:
> 
> PTLIST RTWXTEXT/SFCHOUSTO.ALL
> PTLIST: Error reading NetCDF file

First, since the data is not of type TEXT, I would not include it in a dataset 
whose
other members are of type TEXT.  I.e., I would create the dataset in a manner 
like the
following:

** Example **
DSSERVE ADD ARMETAR/SFCHOUSTO NCDF TYPE=POINT 
DIRFILE='/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/Surface_METAR*.nc' 
INFO=/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/mynetcdfpt.cfg "Real-Time SFC 
Hourly Text - STO

Next, I would need to use the 'ncdump' utility to dump out the headers of the 
netCDF files to see
how the variables in it/them are named.

Next, I would modify the _renamed_ copy of the configuration file to include 
the correct
mapping between names found in the netCDF file (found using 'ncdump') and names 
that
McIDAS understands.

Question:

- did you dump the contents of your netCDF and get the list of variable names?

> I know that these are valid NetCDF files, because I can view them in IDV.

I have no doubt that your netCDF files are valid.  The question is if they are 
in
a form that can be used be used by McIDAS.

I will grab one of the netCDF files you are trying to use, and use it to setup
a dataset here at Unidata.  If I am successful, I will send you back the 
procedure
you should follow.  When I will be able to get to this is unknown at the moment,
but I wouldn't expect it to be more than a week.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: SXY-331778
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed