Re: Are There Best Practices for Developing New NetCDF Conventions?

[John Caron <caron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Russ Rew wrote:
> > So we are wondering what the netCDF conventions community thinks
> > about these considerations, and any advice or experience they may
> > offer us on how to add our own attributes to a netCDF file in a
> > coherent way that is harmonious with other, existing conventions.
>
> For now I would recommend simple prefixes as part of the attribute
> name in new conventions comprehensive enough that name clashes with
> existing conventions are likely.  

should be "unlikely".

I could see mimicking XML namespaces somewhat, by adding a prefix to attribute names, but what should the seperator charactor be? Unfortunately the ":" wont work, since right now in CDL syntax we have:

 char time(record=63, time_len=21);
    time:long_name = "forecast date and time";

suppose you want to add an attribute "title" and indicate its in the "Dublin Core" namespace. Possible examples:

 char time(record=63, time_len=21);
   time:long_name = "forecast date and time";
   time:dc_title = "forecast date and time";

 char time(record=63, time_len=21);
    time:long_name = "forecast date and time";
    time:dc/title = "forecast date and time";

 char time(record=63, time_len=21);
    time:long_name = "forecast date and time";
    time:dc#title = "forecast date and time";

 char time(record=63, time_len=21);
    time:long_name = "forecast date and time";
    time:dc@title = "forecast date and time";

etc. At the moment the "/" seems the most natural with less possible conflicts.


this would just be a convention, but we could start a "namespace" convention page, to minimize conflicts, just listing them:

Prefix   Convention	  XML namespace				Owner
dc  	  Dublin Core	   "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";	 Dublin Core Initiative
thredds  THREDDS	   "http://unidata.ucar.edu/thredds/";	 Unidata
...

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