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Re: [netcdf-java] announce: release candidate 2 for Netcdf-Java library version 4.0


Doug Lindholm wrote:
> 
> 
> John Caron wrote:
>> catalog2 is not ready for release, so we removed it from jar. probably
>> should remove from javadoc to
>> avoid confusion. but i could leave it in the src so you can look at if
>> you want.
> 
> Working with the released dev version is bleeding edge enough for me
> right now, but we might keep that option on the table.
> 
>>> - Is the opendap jar consistent with the scm.opendap.org/svn repository?
>>
>> yes, but they dont seem to be releasing any jar files.
> 
> I've been in communication with James, Nathan, and Peter, so at least
> they know someone cares about the Java implementation.
> 
>>
>>> Here's what I'm doing. I have extended the opendap java code to make a
>>> customized time series server. I am using DAP Sequences to package the
>>> data. Our data are in HDF5 files and I have NcML files for them which I
>>> use to read the data into the server via the NetCDF APIs. We also have
>>> simple binary files for which I plan to implement an IOServiceProvider
>>> so I can use the NcML approach with them. I'm also overriding the
>>> default ascii output for Sequences to produce csv formatted output for
>>> easier integration with spreadsheets.
>>
>> that sounds very cool. Im working on point data reading, send me a URL
>> so I can see what it looks like.
>>
> 
> I'll give you a peek as soon as I have a test release that isn't
> horribly broken. The NcML worked incredibly well. I'm doing some of this
> work for Bob Weigel (GMU, ViRBO) and really selling him on these
> technologies. He simply wanted some metadata to describe his files and I
>  opened them up to the NetCDF API. He was happy to see how easily a
> THREDDS catalog could provide metadata and a link to the data service
> (my TimeSeriesServer via NcML). When I told him about cataloggen, he
> said that was exactly what he's been trying to write. He hears a lot of
> reinventing being discussed in the space physics VxO community, so I
> expect he'll be trying to get the word out about Unidata technologies.

great, thanks for your support!

> 
>> as you've noticed, we arent handling sequences yet in NcDODSServlet.
>> Is your code general enough
>> that we might want to incorporate? Or am i misunderstanding what you
>> have done?
> 
> I was hoping that I could pull off a generic csv ascii output including
> sequences, but I got lazy (and agile) and did the simple thing that
> works. It's interesting that Nathan suggested that I need to modify
> opendap.servers.ascii.asciiSeq.java. It turns out that my code was using
> opendap.servlet.AsciiWriter which has your name on it. My server now
> extends AbstractServlet and overrides doGetASC to use my extension of
> AsciiWriter.

I think i just helped them refactor how they handle ASCII requests.

> 
> Is the current ascii format for Sequences written in stone? If a csv
> friendly format would be preferred, I might be inspired to make it more
> general and contribute that.

Its really an opendap thing - they are / were mimicking the way that the C 
server does output. You
could ask them, and we may be able to figure out how to allow customizations at 
that level. I know
they have some ideas for "file out" capabilities.

Weve been working on "Netcdf Subset Service", which allows lat/lon bounding box 
requetss, and can
output CSV. Dunno if thats interesting to you.

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/interfaceSpec/StationDataSubsetService.html

> 
>>
>> we have some plans for allowing user-pluggable HTML rendering. What if
>> we gave you a way to plug in
>> your code that took a catalog or dataset and did the rendering for it?
>>
> 
> Pluggable HTML rendering would be great. I'm already looking into
> providing a custom form from my server when *.html is requested. I
> imagine that I would also want a custom representation of the THREDDS
> metadata and service options.
> 
>> We are doing a lot of refactoring right now for a 4.0 release. I
>> cc:ing ethan since he's working on
>> that.
> 
> I'll keep that in mind if I have any suggestions.
> 
> BTW, has anyone tried putting THREDDS catalogs in an XML database like
> eXist?

I havent heard of anyone doing that. CDP keeps metadata in a database, and 
generates catalogs from
it. But i think its a RDBMS, not an XML database.

> 
> Thanks,
> Doug