[netCDF #CGQ-607993]: Questions about netCDF

Hi Becky,

> At NCO we do not currently support output products in netCDF.

I assume NCO is the NCEP Central Operations.  Just FYI, that acronym
is also commonly understood in the netCDF community to refer to the
NetCDF Operators software:

  http://nco.sourceforge.net/

so I'm spelling it out for our support archives, where this reply may be 
found in the future (with all email addresses x-ed out).

> ...  We do use
> MADIS data in netCDF as input to some of our processes, but our use of
> netCDF has been somewhat limited.  We are looking into expanding our use
> and making netCDF a supported format in NCO.  We would develop the
> expertise here to do Tier 1 support to our users and customers.  One
> part of that I would expect would be sending some of our folks to
> UNIDATA's netCDF training.

That would be great!  Our next training workshop for netCDF is Oct
28-29 in Boulder.  An announcement and instructions for registration
will be posted soon to the Unidata community email list.  I assume
you'll get that, since you're now on the Unidata User Committee email
list.  Also it might be good to register early, as we'll be limited to
50 participants this year.

> I was asked to inquire as to the level of support that you provide for
> netCDF, both the format and the software.  We would work through the
> issues as best we could, but then would turn to you for help.  I know at
> the UserComm meeting I attended in March Mohan indicated netCDF was by
> far your most downloaded package.  So I was wondering if you would be
> willing to share with me some idea of the volume of support requests you
> get are, and what kind of turn-around time you typically have on
> requests.  Basically, any description of the type of netCDF user support
> we could expect to get from UNIDATA would be greatly appreciated.

Sure, good questions!  Here's a plot of the support load in terms of
number of responses per week for all netCDF mailing lists and out
netcdf-support emails address, in comparison with other packages:

  
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/committees/usercom/2010spring/statusreports/support.html

from which you'll see our support load is around (and occasionally
exceeds) 25 to 30 responses per week.  That includes netCDF C,
Fortran, and Java interfaces as well as some developer mailing lists.

We've had to recently change the email people get when they submit a
support response, because our long-term development and documentation
efforts must be balanced with providing support, to make sure we don't
generate more support with buggy software or inadequate documentation.

So the response time varies a lot.  It's typically within a day for
easy questions, but can be longer than a week or two for difficult
questions for which we don't have easy answers.  Some questions are
just put on hold, because they point out installation problems on
platforms to which we have no access, for example, or problems that we
can't reproduce.  

Since you would be providing a first tier of support, I think we
could give your questions some priority, and also help with providing
you access to our archives of thousands of previous support answers.

> As an aside, we are users of LDM and have found the support there to be
> great for our operational use of LDM, so that is one basis of comparison
> I'll use when I talk to my managers.

We probably can't meet the same standard that LDM support sets, just
because the load is so much higher.  We have actually requested some
additional resources to help us with support in one of our proposals,
now under review, because with the growth of netCDF and CF use, we keep
seeing a growth in netCDF support also.

We would be happy to work with you in making our support facilities
available, especially if it would mean less support for us!  However,
we're believers in involving developers in supporting their software,
because it keeps us grounded in terms of user needs and problems with
the software.

--Russ

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                      http://www.unidata.ucar.edu



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: CGQ-607993
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed