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Steve, My point in bringing in JPEG2000 / JPIP into the discussion was that I view the approach they are taking as a model for how the OPeNDAP protocol might become part of WCS. It has been my intention to follow what those folks are doing to bring the JPIP protocol in as a WCS extension standard and then see whether it makes sense to do the same thing for OPeNDAP. I realize the community JPEG2K/JPIP serves is different from the CF/netCDF/OPeNDAP community, but I think they are setting a precedent that we might follow. This would be an avenue for making OPeNDAP a part of WCS and would address the difficulty you mention of organizations that are mandated to use OGC standards for data access. To me, this is very much a part of the GALEON mission. I brought it up as a way to address what I thought was one of your main concerns. As I see it, Stefano's draft CF-netCDF extension standard takes care of the encoding specification. The question now is whether there is someone who can take a look at the proposed JPIP extension standard and do something similar for OPeNDAP. If there are other approaches, I'd love to hear them -- especially if someone is ready to champion one of them in the WCS standards working group. -- Ben On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Steve Hankin <Steven.C.Hankin@xxxxxxxx>wrote:
All,
More great inputs. Thanks all. Most of the concerns that were raised at
the GO-ESSP meeting last week have now been expressed with good clarity in
this discussion. Since this is a GALEON email list I suspect, that the
GO-ESSP participants like myself generally only tune in with half an ear.
(Thanks for permitting us to "butt in".) So there is a level of context
about GALEON, itself, that may be missing to us. Namely, can someone
provide a clear statement of the goals (mission) of the GALEON project? Is
there any sense among GALEON participants that the goals should be modified
in view of the WCS1.2 "core plus extensions" model?
I ask this in part after reflecting at length why the analogy of "the
JPEG2000 community" felt amiss to me. JPEG200 is an IT standard that is
emerging from the IT standards committee process. The metric of success for
JPEG2000 is that it performs useful work for any community that can benefit
from it. Marrying JPEG2000 to WCS is a potential win for both standards,
where we view the goal as promoting specific technologies because they serve
users generally.
The problems raised at the GO-ESSP meeting, by contrast, reflect the needs
of a specific end user community (the scientists we serve) -- not a
technology development community like ourselves. A specific and pressing
example is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is
advancing an ambitious intercomparison of distributed climate model results
(CMIP5). These model outputs will be characterized by huge size and nasty
coordinate systems ("tripolar" oceans and "cube-sphere" atmospheres). It
is incumbent upon the IT support community to make this ambitious effort
successful (and many other efforts like it). And it is also incumbent upon
us to help other less specialized communities (e.g. "climate impacts")
participate in the broader interpretation of the model results.
Does it fit into the GALEON mission statement to ask how GALEON can help in
this effort? The climate community already has highly advanced (though
admittedly incomplete) solutions for distributed model intercomparison using
netCDF-CF-OPeNDAP. Where we have critical gaps to be filled is 1) making
these model outputs available to outside communities (often GIS application
users); and 2) bridging with European partners for whom an OGC-acceptable
solution is a legally-mandated requirement. Can GALEON help us to succeed
in these goals?
- Steve
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