Pauline,
> I do have some further questions... Are you running this for a
> particular project/department, and what kind of users are you getting?
At present, the TDS is being run at the request of the IOOS Program
Office to provide an unified interface to data via OpenDAP. (We are
still largely using Hyrax at the moment). Our purpose is to not only
serve aggregated oceanographic datasets for Alaska but feed these up
through the IOOS backbone to the global ocean observing system (GOOS). I
think there are probably several people in organizations on this list
that can echo the same goals.
We use OpenDAP in conjunction with modifications to the NetCDF, HDF and
OPeNDAP driver in the GDAL library to make gridded data available via
Mapserver and Matplotlib. There are some things the WMS in Mapserver
cannot perform that we intercept and render through Matplotlib. Two
examples are general contouring and vector plotting. This is
accomplished by insertion of GDAL type markings (PROJ.4/WKT) in the
global metadata for NetCDF and HDF served files. There are a lot of
crazy things we do to increase capabilities of Mapserver, but I won't go
into detail here.
Something for consideration in the future is hopefully the GDAL driver
can understand CF attributes to form the proper PROJ.4/WKT or we can just
add the needed PROJ.4/WKT to the ncML. Or vice versa, PROJ.4/WKT -> CF
> I wonder if there are many GIS users...
Indeed. I estimate that the majority of analysis by agencies in Alaska
is primarily ERSI/ArcGIS/ArcMAP based. The bulk of our data requests are
to obtain datasets in GeoTIFF (WCS) for import into ESRI.
However, scientists want access to gridded information via OPeNDAP or
direct download (HTTP).
The remaining requests have been for entire periods of record or large
periods of record for station data: waves, temperature, wind, etc.
Rob
