[McIDAS #SXY-331778]: Unable to add historical wind profiler case study to ADDE server.

["Unidata McIDAS Support" <support-mcidas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Samuel,

re:
> The learning guide(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/workshop/toc.htm) is very
> useful, and the MCIDAS users's guide(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/users_guide/DSSERVE.html#35904)
> are very specific about MD and NetCDF file formats, however there doesn't seem to be clear instructions
> how to setup a NetCDF configuration file for METAR data,

You are correct.  The documentation for setting up serving of POINT/GRID data out of netCDF files
is lacking.

> or how to translate a NetCDF file to a METAR/MD form.

Correct again, but this time the reason is twofold:

- there is no netCDF to MDXX file conversion utility in McIDAS

- converting raw METAR data (in the form that is broadcast in NOAAPort and conveyed in the
  IDD IDS|DDPLUS datastream) is an activity of McIDAS-XCD decoders.  If you had all of
  the METAR data that you wanted to decode into McIDAS MD files available in broadcast
  format, you could setup a system where you could decode the data.  This would need to
  be done on a machine that is _not_ processing realtime data from an LDM.  The
  process would be mimic what is done for realtime data for your historic data and
  then rename the output MD files to something like we talked about previously.
 
> Because of this, I simply copied the file from the example netcdfpoint.cfg, and used it in the
> following DSSERVE command:
> 
> DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/SFCHOUSTO NCDF TYPE=POINT DIRFILE='/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/Surface_METAR*.nc' INFO=/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/netcdfpnt.cfg "Real-Time SFC Hourly Text - STO
> 
> Now when I try to show any data from this dataset, I get the following error:
> 
> PTLIST RTWXTEXT/SFCHOUSTO.ALL
> PTLIST: Error reading NetCDF file

First, since the data is not of type TEXT, I would not include it in a dataset whose
other members are of type TEXT.  I.e., I would create the dataset in a manner like the
following:

** Example **
DSSERVE ADD ARMETAR/SFCHOUSTO NCDF TYPE=POINT DIRFILE='/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/Surface_METAR*.nc' INFO=/data/snapshot/20080204-07/ldm/mcidas/NetCDF/mynetcdfpt.cfg "Real-Time SFC Hourly Text - STO

Next, I would need to use the 'ncdump' utility to dump out the headers of the netCDF files to see
how the variables in it/them are named.

Next, I would modify the _renamed_ copy of the configuration file to include the correct
mapping between names found in the netCDF file (found using 'ncdump') and names that
McIDAS understands.

Question:

- did you dump the contents of your netCDF and get the list of variable names?

> I know that these are valid NetCDF files, because I can view them in IDV.

I have no doubt that your netCDF files are valid.  The question is if they are in
a form that can be used be used by McIDAS.

I will grab one of the netCDF files you are trying to use, and use it to setup
a dataset here at Unidata.  If I am successful, I will send you back the procedure
you should follow.  When I will be able to get to this is unknown at the moment,
but I wouldn't expect it to be more than a week.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: SXY-331778
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed