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[netCDF #UML-602431]: NetCDF support for factor fields

Hello,

Thank you for your kind words, and your suggestion.  I wonder, does the R 
netCDF interface create netCDF3 or netCDF4 files? If the latter, there is a 
string data type which could be used instead of the lookup table you have 
implemented via the attributes/numeric values. Do you know offhand which type 
of file is being created?

NetCDF generally doesn't perform any computational operations, as it was 
designed for data storage, and processing can be done upstream (similar to what 
you have implemented).  It is a commonly asked for feature, however, and we are 
always glad to hear from our community; feature requests are what guide our 
development roadmap. 

Thank you very much, have a great day!

-Ward 


> Dear Support-netcdf,
> I have been using NetCDF in R for tree species traits (dimensions = space,
> time and tree), where variables range from several types, many of which are
> strings.
> Ecological and environmental data is rich in strings and categories, which
> make it very difficult to be used in NetCDF.
> 
> For my own personal use I created a wrapper class which converts strings to
> unique numerics and stores the conversion from numeric to string as an
> attribute. This function is applied automatically on creating a new file or
> loading from a file. It is a workaround, as having a attribute storing
> conversions strings and on-load functions is not really nice or portable.
> 
> I believe NetCDF, by self documenting and because the way it register data,
> captures an essential aspect of observation recording. The self-documenting
> property is key for propagating data from different levels (for example, to
> procedurally join tree leaf data to tree level data to forest level data).
> I think NetCDF would have a much wider reach if it could automatically
> implement those factor/categories translations, or have special fields
> which store the conversion factors (or any on-store and on-load functions)
> which could then be implemented in a platform independent way.
> I wonder whether this implementation could be considered for a future
> version.
> 
> Thank you,
> Paulo.
> 
> 


Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: UML-602431
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
===================
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