Hi all,
It appears that another conflict has arisen that will prevent me from
participating in the WCS.SWG telecon tomorrow, so I'm using this email for a
few updates on issues of interest to both groups.
-- In GALEON phase 1, there was a very simple WCS use case, namely, the client specifies a
"parameter" name, a bounding box, and time constraint and gets back a binary
"coverage" that, if written to disk, is actually a CF-netCDF3 file containing the
requested data subset. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought the simplicity of that use case was one
of the main reasons for the wide, active, and productive participation in GALEON 1. To my way of
thinking, this use case represents the real core of WCS for our community. Efforts have been
undertaken by Dominic Lowe and Steven Keens to make sure this use case is still covered in
subsequent versions of WCS.
-- The CF-netCDF3 encoding format specification has evolved from a brief
document consisting mainly of pointers to information about the netCDF and CF
conventions into an extension standard which is a complete specification of the
WCS interface behaviors in cases where the delivery payload is CF-netCDF3. As
a consequence, it's taking longer than anticipated to complete the first draft
which is now anticipated to be available in mid-July.
-- The current version of the CF-netCDF3 is now beyond my level of expertise, so Stefano
Nativi is taking on the role of editor which reflects the fact that he is in fact doing
most of the "heavy lifting" on this document. Our thanks to Stefano.
If at all possible, I'll try to participate in at least part of the WCS.SWG
telecon tomorrow. In any case though, it is important for us to continue a
vigorous dialog between GALEON and the WCS.SWG.
-- Ben
