THREDDS Technical Status

Status update 03/20/2009

  1. THREDDS Data Server (TDS)
    1. Stable release is 3.17.3.1, mainly in maintenance mode.
      1. Security enhancements.
      2. GINI polar stereographic bug fix.
      3. Various other bug fixes.
    2. Development release 4.0.6; alpha release, available for testing
      1. Main focus for 4.0 release:
        1. Use of CDM/netCDF-Java 4.0
        2. Improvement to performance, memory use, and stability.
        3. Addition of OGC WMS service [based on ncWMS code, with thanks to Jon Blower (Univ of Reading) and Pauline Mak (Univ of Tasmania)]
      2. Support for ensemble GRIB data added.
      3. Security enhancements, from 3.17 and more.
      4. Using Spring Framework for improved modularity and support for other industry best practices.
  2. Common Data Model
    1. Netcdf-Java library version 4.0 is now the stable release. This means that we are committed to the public API, and will keep future changes to the API backwards compatible. Much work has gone into fixing bugs and stabilizing the core code, to make it suitable in production code both as standalone library and as part of the TDS.
    2. FeatureDataset
      1. FeatureDataset management extended to Grids, RadialDataset.
      2. PointDataset implementation of the "Nested Table" point data model is mostly complete, with some optimisation still to be done.
      3. Writing datasets into CF specification is started, but still needs lots of work. This will be the output format for several TDS subsetting services, including possibly a WCS point service.
    3. Coordinate Systems
      1. Rotated Lat/Lon Projection
      2. add _CoordinateSystemFor to allow wholesale assignment of coord systems to variables.
      3. Modis Satellite CoordSysBuilder
    4. IOSP
      1. GEMPAK Point data (Don Murray)
      2. GRIB IOSP refactored (Robb Kambic). Now uses binary indexes for 2X faster reading.
      3. HDF5 IOSP now correctly reads fractal heap structure, allows fletcher32 filter.
      4. NIDS IOSP can handle TDWR. (Yuan Ho)
      5. Universal Format Radar IOSP (Yuan Ho)
    5. General
      1. FileCache refactored for additional thread safety and diagnostics.
      2. Detection of NetcdfFile object cycle mismanagement, and file handle leaks.
    6. ToolsUI
      1. New Tabs for debugging BUFR and HDF5 IOSPS, Aggregated datasets, and FMRC Datasets.
      2. FeatureDataset scanner tries to guess what feature type a file is.
    7. NcML
      1. Aggregation now allows elements to modify each dataset in the aggregation, before it is aggregated.
        this allows datasets to be made into grids for fmrc, for example.
      2. Rudimentary WMS client for testing TDS WM

Status update 09/24/2008

  1. THREDDS Data Server (TDS)
    1. Stable release is 3.16.43 is mostly in maintenence mode.
      1. Level II NEXRAD radar server bug fixes
    2. Development release is 4.0.24
      1. Integrating Spring into TDS for long term maintainability.
      2. New WCS 1.0, WCSplus implementations
      3. Improvements in configuration and management of TDS/IDD catalogs.
      4. Performance enhancements based on TDS profiling
      5. A prototype adding WMS functionality to TDS is done, based on Jon Blower (Readding U) ncWMS code.
  2. Common Data Model
    1. Stable release 2.2.22 is in maintenence mode, as we have run out of '2's.
    2. Features backported (in both 2.2 and 4.0):
      1. McIDAS AREA file IOSP
      2. New NEXRAD hi-res file format
      3. Improved NIDS, GINI handling
    3. Development release is 4.0.23
      1. BUFR IOSP is rewritten, and works on almost entire IDD/HDS BUFR messages.
      2. Enhancements like scale/offset correctly applied to structure member variables.
      3. More flexible NetcdfDataset ehancements control by user
      4. Many improvements in Structure/Sequence/ArrayStructure classes.
      5. Use of enums
      6. Starting to do object size enhancements based on TDS profiling
      7. No direct use of ucar.units for time processing. Will switch to joda or similar.
    4. CDM Nested Tables
      1. General API for handling point data, will replace older ucar.dt.point classes
      2. Working on CF standard for writing to netcdf-3.
    5. BUFR data format
      1. We are working with international community to solve some of the problems of decoding BUFR data in a general way.
      2. We are coordinating with British Met on their efforts to create a standard XML BUFR table format.
      3. Helping NCEP debug some encoding problems.
      4. The bufrtables email discussion group is hosted at Unidata.
      5. We will soon have a BUFR validation web service to assist providers and clients.
    6. NcML
      1. General refactoring for all but FMRC
    7. ToolsUI
      1. FeatureType Tab supports Nested Tables implementation, will eventually supplant Point/Station/Profile/etc tabs
      2. IOSP/BUFR tab for debugging BUFR file