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RFC: some tasks for NCSA

As a result of some discussion, I have a revised list of major goals for NCSA. 

In the web page:
http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/netcdf/netcdf-4/index.html 
there is one item under 'New Features for HDF5', 'Explicit support for
coordinate variables/axes'. Item 2 below is a refinement of that bullet. 

The other 3 can be added.

Consider these bullets a proposal, subject to discussion.  When we get
consensus on these, we'll set some firm milestones.

  1. Update and correct the HDF5 specification document.
2. A dimension scales API sufficient to support coordinate variables/axes. 
      See the proposal
        <http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/apps/netcdfh5/h5shared_dims.html>
      for an initial idea.  We need to review and gain consensus on
      the design, and then implement it.
3. An index object that permits specifying an order for iterating over 
   a set of objects, and perhaps also permits efficient insertion into
   and deletion from the ordered set it indexes.

  4.  MPI-IO enhancements to improve performance, as suggested by the
   Northwestern/Argonne work.

--
Robert E. McGrath  (HDF Java Team Leader)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, Illinois 61820
(217)-333-6549

mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxxxxx