Re: [netcdf-java] announce: release candidate 2 for Netcdf-Java library version 4.0

John Caron wrote:
> catalog2 is not ready for release, so we removed it from jar. probably should 
> remove from javadoc to
> avoid confusion. but i could leave it in the src so you can look at if you want.

Working with the released dev version is bleeding edge enough for me 
right now, but we might keep that option on the table.

> > - Is the opendap jar consistent with the scm.opendap.org/svn repository?
>
> yes, but they dont seem to be releasing any jar files.

I've been in communication with James, Nathan, and Peter, so at least 
they know someone cares about the Java implementation.

> > Here's what I'm doing. I have extended the opendap java code to make a
> > customized time series server. I am using DAP Sequences to package the
> > data. Our data are in HDF5 files and I have NcML files for them which I
> > use to read the data into the server via the NetCDF APIs. We also have
> > simple binary files for which I plan to implement an IOServiceProvider
> > so I can use the NcML approach with them. I'm also overriding the
> > default ascii output for Sequences to produce csv formatted output for
> > easier integration with spreadsheets.
>
> that sounds very cool. Im working on point data reading, send me a URL so I can 
> see what it looks like.

I'll give you a peek as soon as I have a test release that isn't 
horribly broken. The NcML worked incredibly well. I'm doing some of this 
work for Bob Weigel (GMU, ViRBO) and really selling him on these 
technologies. He simply wanted some metadata to describe his files and I 
 opened them up to the NetCDF API. He was happy to see how easily a 
THREDDS catalog could provide metadata and a link to the data service 
(my TimeSeriesServer via NcML). When I told him about cataloggen, he 
said that was exactly what he's been trying to write. He hears a lot of 
reinventing being discussed in the space physics VxO community, so I 
expect he'll be trying to get the word out about Unidata technologies.

> as you've noticed, we arent handling sequences yet in NcDODSServlet. Is your 
> code general enough
> that we might want to incorporate? Or am i misunderstanding what you have done?

I was hoping that I could pull off a generic csv ascii output including 
sequences, but I got lazy (and agile) and did the simple thing that 
works. It's interesting that Nathan suggested that I need to modify 
opendap.servers.ascii.asciiSeq.java. It turns out that my code was using 
opendap.servlet.AsciiWriter which has your name on it. My server now 
extends AbstractServlet and overrides doGetASC to use my extension of 
AsciiWriter.

Is the current ascii format for Sequences written in stone? If a csv 
friendly format would be preferred, I might be inspired to make it more 
general and contribute that.

> we have some plans for allowing user-pluggable HTML rendering. What if we gave 
> you a way to plug in
> your code that took a catalog or dataset and did the rendering for it?

Pluggable HTML rendering would be great. I'm already looking into 
providing a custom form from my server when *.html is requested. I 
imagine that I would also want a custom representation of the THREDDS 
metadata and service options.

> We are doing a lot of refactoring right now for a 4.0 release. I cc:ing ethan 
> since he's working on
> that.

I'll keep that in mind if I have any suggestions.

BTW, has anyone tried putting THREDDS catalogs in an XML database like 
eXist?

Thanks,
Doug