Re: NCDC Datasets and COARDS Conventions

Ok heres the background:

Its a bit hard to get the udunits time values right in the aggregations, 
so I started using ISO date strings, and proposed that CF accept those. 
ISO date strings IMO are superior to udunit values for a number of 
reasons, but the proposal was rejected. I never got around to moving 
back to udunit values because, well, it wasnt that easy for reasons that 
arent very interesting. Since my client software (CDM) accepts ISO 
strings, most TDS users didnt notice. Some have (like Roy), and i have 
the problem fixed in 4.2.

I would recommend that client software accept supersets of CF when 
possible. Data writers should, OTOH, try to be strict with CF 
compliance, and I plead guilty as charged.

I think Bill's issue may be seperate from all that, and we are working 
on it. ill let you know what we find.




On 4/30/2010 9:08 AM, Roy Mendelssohn wrote:
>    
> > Huai-min and I had a face to face talk with Dan Swank and talked about
> > the issues with the OISST and the Blended Sea Winds aggregated data
> > showing ISO dates versus the indices that the "community" need for their
> > legacy code and scripts.
> >
> >      
>
> Not a question of legacy versus non-legacy, it is a question of standards.  One 
> could argue what the CF or COARDS standard should use for its time units, and 
> there is a forum for that.  But at the moment, ISO strings are not part of 
> these standards.  Moreover, the service has as part of its metadata  that what 
> I receive are COARDS compliant, which they are not.  It would be no different 
> than if my service said it was OGC of ISO complaint and what was returned 
> didn't follow the standard - our code would be broken.  We code to to the 
> standard, which makes our code interoperable with all datasets that follow that 
> standard.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Roy
>
>
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> Roy Mendelssohn
> Supervisory Operations Research Analyst
> NOAA/NMFS
> Environmental Research Division
> Southwest Fisheries Science Center
> 1352 Lighthouse Avenue
> Pacific Grove, CA 93950-2097
>
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>