On Aug 24, 2009, at 10:42 AM, Steve Hankin wrote:
NetCDF (& associated tooling) is arguably emerging as the
definitive standard for interchange of 3-dimensional, time-
dependent fluid earth system datasets.
For the members of the NetCDF community who favor this argument, may I
point out there are other communities that say similar things about
their solutions? And I'm not referring to OGC, which to my knowledge
has never pitched SWE (or anything else) as a straight replacement for
NetCDF, notwithstanding Alex's claims for SWE's representational
capabilities. I mean, it's not like apples and zebras, but the two
seem really different to me.
I like NetCDF for a lot of things, including many-dimensional and time-
dependent data representations.
But terms like "definitive standard" carry their own hyperbolic
weight, especially in a world of multiple standard bodies and many
different kinds of system requirements.
So it seems to me there will not be *a* winner, either in this
argument or in the earth science data management community's choice of
technologies. Thus, I'm much more interested in understanding the
characteristics of each, so as to use them well and maybe even improve
them. (Hmm, I suppose that would explain my project affiliation....)
John
---------------
John Graybeal
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
graybeal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
