Rosetta

Status Report: October 2013 - March 2014

Sean Arms, Jen Oxelson, Jeff Weber

Strategic Focus Areas

The Rosetta group's work supports the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:

  1. Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data

    The initial goal of Rosetta is to transform unstructured ASCII data files into the netCDF format; once in this format, standard tools, such as the THREDDS Data Server, IDV, Python, and other analysis packages, can take advantage of these datasets with relative ease.

  2. Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data

    Although the primary goal of Rosetta is to get data into the netCDF format, the transformation process does not stop there. The Rosetta group realizes that not everyone knows how to work with netCDF files, and may feel more comfortable working with other formats. Therefore, Rosetta includes the ability to transform from one format to another (e.g. netCDF to .xls), thereby reducing data friction.

  3. Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use

    Metadata contained in netCDF format file (no longer locked away in a separate README file) can be automatically extracted, facilitating the discovery of data in these files. Additionally, the Rosetta development plan includes the creation of a standard ASCII and spreadsheet representations of the CF-1.6 DSGs.

  4. Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community

    Promote the use of standard formats in the dissemination of data, while allowing flexibility to transform into other formats, as needed, to enable users to "do science". For commonly used formats, such as User Defined ASCII format or an unstructured spreadsheet, create and advocate for the use of a standard representations based on the CF-1.6 DSGs.

Grumpy Cat is Grumpy

Activities Since the Last Status Report

Live demos to various groups

AMS 2014 Presentation

Arms, S. C., J. O. Ganter, J. Weber, and M. K. Ramamurthy, 2014: Rosetta - Unidata’s Web-based Translation Tool: Progress and Future Plans. 30th Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies, 94th AMS Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, A.84. Available online at https://ams.confex.com/ams/94Annual/webprogram/Paper240011.html

Basic Documentation

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/rosetta/site/

Accomplishments of Note

  • Added the ability to publish converted files directly to RAMADDA and the ACADIS Gateway
  • Live instance of Rosetta hosted at Unidata for testing
  • Released the Rosetta source code on github

Planned Activities

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following lines of development:

  • Increase the number of CF-1.6 discrete sampling geometries handled by Rosetta
  • Begin collecting metrics for the instance of Rosetta hosted at Unidata
  • Continue documentation efforts, including the creation of screencasts for User documentation
  • Solicit examples from the community (hint, hint...that's you guys!)

New Activities

We plan to enhance Rosetta in the following ways:

  • Investigate csv and xls(x) representations of the CF-1.6 Discrete Sampling Geometries
  • Enable Desktop (local) use of Rosetta
  • Incorporate TDS capabilities into Rosetta, allowing for TDS services (like point subsetting of grids) to easily be applied to local files

Relevant Metrics

We've received a handful of support questions regarding the availability of Rosetta, as well as requests for demonstrations.