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oceansites / dmt

Activities of the OceanSITES Data Management Team
http://www.oceansites.org/data
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Remove recommendation to have oceansites_version attribute in the file. #11

Closed dpsnowden closed 5 years ago

dpsnowden commented 8 years ago

Change data format guide to remove the oceansites version global attribute and use the CF recommended Conventions: CF-1.6 Oceansites-1.3.

ngalbraith commented 8 years ago

I believe this is used by the GDAC software. I've asked Jing and Thierry if they can use the Conventions attribute instead.

Hi Thierry, Jing, and all -

Is there any reason the GDACs need the format_version global attribute? This information is also in the Conventions attribute, with this example in the Format Ref Manual: Conventions=”CF-1.6, OceanSITES-1.3, ACDD-1.2”.

I think the format_version attribute is currently used by the GDACs, but I wonder if that code could be updated sometime. While I know the GDAC's time is really limited, and you have a lot to do, I worry about having the same information in more than one place. Also, with the format being adopted outside OceanSITES, the Conventions attribute is more flexible for other users.

By the way, this wasn't my idea, and I'll just go ahead and blame Derrick for raising the issue! I think I've asked about it before, and as far as I recall I was told that it's needed. Still, if you think you could get along without it, I DO agree that it would be a little cleaner.

dpsnowden commented 8 years ago

Email response from Jing

Nan,

This issue was not raised by Derrick first. I believed he just recalled the issue I discussed during my presentation at the OceanSITES meeting this week. I can identify ~28000 data files having version OceanSITES 1.2 or 1.3 based on the Convention attribute. But there are 3000~4000 data files for which their versions can not be recognized from the Convention attribute.

Someone suggested we should look at the format_version attribute. Earlier data files might use that attribute to document their version. Because we know that Convention attribute should be used in the future, so we discussed the recommendation to drop the format_version in Data Reference Guide 1.4. I did not notice any objection during our discussion. Also there are no GDAC processing programs that depend on the format_version attribute to my knowledge, dropping it should not cause problems at GDAC side, it would make the reference guide clean.

Thanks,

-Jing

dpsnowden commented 8 years ago

Response from Nan,

Thanks, Jing -

I thought I was paying close attention, but I missed the agreement to drop the format_version attribute. That's great - it's listed in the manual as being a GDAC requirement.

ngalbraith commented 5 years ago

This issue can be closed, the global attribute oceansites_version is not in the current version of the Data Format Reference Manual, Version 1.3, January 12, 2015, as served on the OceanSITES web site.