Use Cases: MetApps members completed work on use cases for the Satellite Data Viewer and the Gridded Data Viewer during September and early October. The individual use cases were posted on UMADA and were discussed by the MetApps members in an effort to build a consensus to guide the developers

Discussion Participation: An ongoing concern for the MetApps Task Force is how to stimulate participation in the UMADA discussion areas. Charlie Murphy met with Tammy Sumner and Mike Wright in September to explore approaches that could enhance participation. One of the suggestions from that meeting was to provide a directed focus for the discussions which requires more specific responses from the discussion group members. This was tried at the end of the discussion period for the Image Viewer and Gridded Data Viewer use cases. Individual Task Force members were asked to review the use case of another member and provide input related to how the use case scenario might fail. This approach seemed to increase discussion participation and is being used again in the spring of 2000 for discussions of new prototypes. However, feedback from the members suggests that the specific choice for the directed focus is very important.

Prototype Testing: The first version of the Gridded Data Viewer (GDV) was released in December of 1999 and the Image Viewer (IV) and the Interactive SkewT (IS) were released in January 2000. Testing and discussion of these prototype is currently underway with a deadline of February 29, 2000. Features appearing in this round of prototypes include display and contouring of netcdf gridded data files in the GDV, imagery display on maps or a 3D globe in the IV, and interactive modification of a sounding profiles in the IS. Also very significant is the introduction of data access using the McIDAS remote ADDE server in the IV and IS.

Community Education: As a result of discussion at both the Policy Committee and the Users Committee in the Fall of 1999 it became clear that providing additional information to the Unidata community about Unidata's Java development effort and the role of the MetApps Task Force is both desirable and necessary. As a result Russ Rew and Charlie Murphy wrote an article entitled "MetApps: Building for the Future: for the summer/fall 1999 Unidata Newsletter.