Re: RFC: some tasks for NCSA

• To: Russ Rew <russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: RFC: some tasks for NCSA
• From: Quincey Koziol <koziol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 11:00:53 -0500 (CDT)

Hi Russ,

> >     Interesting, I've been interested in indexing in HDF5 for a while now, 
> > but
> > I wouldn't necessarily have thought it would be needed for the NC4 work.  
> > Are
> > you thinking about the "get the n'th object" calls in netCDF?
> 
> I don't think we actually need it for the NC4 work, but if you were
> going to do it anyway for other requirements, then we could make use
> of it for ordering netCDF objects by creation sequence rather than
> alphabetically by name.  We are implementing a netCDF3/HDF5 library
> without it.
    Well, we haven't really committed to it - mostly just given it some
thought.

> In my experience, netCDF users don't actually need a "get the n'th
> object" call, but just a "get the next object" in the order in which
> the objects were defined/created.  And the reason for wanting to
> preserve the order of creation is relatively minor, to have some
> control over the order in which objects are presented in applications,
> so that related objects are presented together.  For example, an
> ncdump output can be easier to understand if the file creator can
> specify the order things appear by using their creation order.
    How are you planning on presenting the objects in the order they were
created?

    Quincey

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RFC: some tasks for NCSA
    • From: Russ Rew

• References:
  • Re: RFC: some tasks for NCSA
    • From: Russ Rew