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This report updates the status of Unidata's IDV development efforts since the last report (September, 2007).

• IDV version 2.4 was released on December 20, 2008, and can be downloaded at http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv/.

  A more complete list of new features can be found in the IDV 2.4 Release Notes, but a few hightlights are:

  • Support for GEMPAK grid reading.
  • Most of the GEMPAK grid diagnostics were implemented as Jython procedures.
  • Users can save the properties of display controls in display settings.
  • Support for super resolution Level II data
• The IDV Steering Committee met on November 13, 2007 to discuss the 2.4 developments. The developers demonstrated some of the new features (GEMPAK grid reading and diagnostics, display setttings) and gave the committee the opportunity to provide feedback.
• Unidata entered into a contract (2 years with possible 3 year extension) with the Shanghai Tropical Institute (STI) to co-develop a Tropical Cyclone IDV (TC-IDV). This development effort will benefit other IDV users by providing tools to display realtime and historical tropical cyclone tracks and forecasts. Eventually, functions will be added for analysis and verification of forecasts.
• Yuan and Don travelled to China in February. The first part of the trip was spent at STI training 4 TC-IDV developers on the IDV. A plan for TC-IDV development for the upcoming year was laid out. The last part of the trip was spent in Beijing. Don gave a presentation on the RAMADDA work to members of CMA's National Meteorological Information Center. We had discussions of possible collaborations between Unidata and the NMIC.
• The IDV developers gave an impromptu training session to three visitors from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) in December.
• Jeff has been spending some of his time prototyping the RAMADDA data management framework. Part of this effort included enhancements to the IDV to allow faster background product generation.
• The IDV developers are currently preparing for the Unidata Regional Workshop at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, May 18-20, 2008.

New development

Development and testing are underway for the next release of the IDV (2.5) which should be released in Spring 2008 in time for the Unidata Regional Workshop.

• More diagnostic capabilities
• Remote access to Level II data from the TDS.
• Bug fixes and suggest improvements noted a the workshops.

Ongoing efforts include:

• Collaborating in the development of VisAD and McIDAS-V
• Keeping up with new Java interfaces and developments
• Various and sundry IDV bug fixes and enhancements.

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This document is maintained by Don Murray <dmurray@unidata.ucar.edu>