We have the same issue as Tim, in that we haven't been able to find many
good examples of NetCDF-4 for test purposes. We've been updating NCL to
handle NetCDF-4 better, but need to get a better test suite in place for
this.
For example, I wanted to find a NetCDF-4 file with groups, but after
googling for quite a while last night, I gave up. I did find some in the
NetCDF source tree, but these seem like toy examples, and I'm hoping to
find something more "real world".
--Mary
On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Timothy Patterson <
Timothy.Patterson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> EUMETSAT plans to create netCDF-4 products for the upcoming MTG and EPS-SG
> missions. We want to make use of the netCDF-4 enhanced features such as
> groups, but we found very few examples of others using this format, let
> alone the enhanced features. This slow uptake probably also explains the
> lack of netCDF-4-ready tools. But with more users moving to netCDF-4 I
> would expect there to be a bigger incentive to update tools to support it.
> There is now a group looking to update the CF-Conventions to cover netCDF-4
> so it does appear to be gaining acceptance.
>
> If anybody wants to start a netCDF-4 support group, I'd also be interested
> in hearing what problems other netCDF-4 users have encountered and
> overcome and which tools they have found available.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tim Patterson
> Consultant
> EUMETSAT
> Eumetsat-Allee 1
> 6429 Darmstadt
> Germany
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: netcdfgroup-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> netcdfgroup-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cathy Smith (NOAA
> Affiliate)
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2014 4:53 PM
> To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [netcdfgroup] what is status of netCDF3 vs netCDF4?
>
> NetCDF'ers
> We've changed many of our files from netCDF3 to netCDF4 both to take
> advantage of internal packing but also because they work better in some
> software (NCL). We have heard from users of problems reading the newer
> format. Often they don't have their applications or netCDF library upgraded
> to the latest versions but sometimes, software they relied on isn't
> available for netCDF4. For example, EXCEL does not have a netCDF4 interface
> and a package called "FAN" probably doesn't. Should we be assuming users
> and software developers ought to be netCDF4 ready or is
> netCDF4 more of a language for advanced users and there is no expectation
> that users use it as opposed to netCDF3? Should unidata be facilitating the
> update of packages to netCDF4? I'm thinking more of local software such as
> on this page http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/Contrib.html but
> also packages like EXCEL.
> We do suggest users can convert the files back to netCDF3 if possible but
> there are downsides to that for the users.
>
> Thanks,
> Cathy Smith
>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------
> NOAA/ESRL PSD and CU CIRES
> 303-497-6263
> http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/cathy.smith/
>
> Emails about data/webpages may get quicker responses from emailing
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