Unidata NetCDF C/Fortran/C++ User Support

Ed Hartnett, 5/31/11

Introduction

This document describes the user support policy for the NetCDF C/Fortran/C++ libraries and utilities.

Goals for NetCDF Support

In supporting netCDF’s global user base, our goals are:

  1. Provide respectful and timely replies which best serve the user community and support the Unidata vision.
  2. Identify bugs in the software and documentation.
  3. Adjust software and documentation to improve user experience and reduce future support effort.
  4. Accumulate documentary material on the website for user searches.
  5. Assist the end user build (usually) or use (more rarely) netCDF.

Who Gets Support First?

We are committed to providing priority support to US Universities in the Unidata program.

In practice, this prioritization does not affect our work much, for three reasons:

  1. Identification of priority of each support request is via manual inspection.
  2. Easy answers we provide immediately for everyone, hard answers we are already working on as hard as we can.
  3. An important bug may be as easily found by someone else.

Who Provides Support?

Support comes to the Unidata esupport system through the support-netcdf@unidat email address, and redirects from other teams, or from Tom.

Current policy is that the email sits in esupport until Russ, Ed, or Dennis notice that it applies to them, and respond. Occasionally there is some prodding to address a long-standing issue.

Russ is responsible for the integrity of the Unidata netCDF C/Fortran/C++ product. All questions which involve controversy, contain institutional implications, or involve important issues of policy will be discussed with Russ, and turned over to him, at his discretion. User complaints about support or the netCDF products should be directed to Russ.

Escalation of Support

When a support request is received an automatic reply directs the user towards other resources and tells them that we will get to their request as soon as possible.

The support email is then examined by the netCDF programmers. It may be answered immediately, if it is easy.

If a bug is reported, the netCDF programmer involved investigates the bug and decides if it should be elevated to the Jira database. If it is, the support issue is closed and all discussion continues in the Jira tool.

Time Each Engineer Should Spend on Support

Support is intended to be handled about equally throughout the netCDF C/Fortran/C++ team, proportional to time spent on the project. In practice, each programmer has certain areas of support:

  1. Russ - netCDF classic, ncdump, C++.
  2. Ed - netCDF-4, build, parallel I/O and HPC.
  3. Dennis - remote access, ncgen

At times our support load seriously limits our programming. At other times our programming seriously limits our support.

Limits to Support

As support is provided by engineers who have other responsibilities, it must be limited. Time spent on supporting an individual user may be better spent addressing bugs and issues that affect many users. For this reason, maximum use of the FAQ and on-line documentation must be made. Those doing support must have a mechanism to correct and add to on-line documentation as part of the support process.

Support should not be provided for non-Unidata institutions in using compilers or other tools or libraries. We do not have the  resources to support this, and this task is more likely to be done correctly by the tool provider.