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NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
Peter- Peter Cornillon wrote:
I've added dods-tech to this thread. Dods-techers, we are discussing recommendation of a metadata standard to facilitate use of OPeNDAP accessible data in the Earth Sciences. One starting point might be to recommend the use of CF or COARDS. Any thoughts on this?
While COARDS is a good start, it does not always have the metadata necessary for complete representation of the semantics of the data. CF (which is supposed to be a superset of COARDS) provides more of the information necessary. For example, COARDS only suggests udunits compliancy for unit specifications, but does not mandate it as CF does. That means that users of COARDS could use the non-standard abbreviation "C" for Celsius or "mb" for millibar and still be COARDS compliant. However, in the international standards that udunits complies with, these are the abbreviations for Coulomb and millibit. Another example would be something like atmospheric sigma coordinates. COARDS does not specify how one could take sigma to pressure, nor does it have a way of specifying what other variables are necessary for this transformation. For our IDV work, we strongly suggest CF compliance because it supports more of the semantic information necessary to use the data. Don ************************************************************* Don Murray UCAR Unidata Program dmurray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx P.O. Box 3000 (303) 497-8628 Boulder, CO 80307 http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/donm "Time makes everyone interesting, even YOU!" *************************************************************
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