Unidata Support

Above are histograms that portray the number of Unidata email responses for categories of support for a one year period ending September 20, 2004. The histograms are arranged by yearly activity averages with the highest on the left and lowest on the right. Each quarter year within the period is depicted from oldest to newest from left to right. The number of responses has been normalized to weekly averages so that the support load over the various periods can be easily compared.

Total support averaged 134 responses/week over the entire year; 131 for the first quarter; 116 for the second quarter; 145 for the third quarter; and 144 for the current quarter.

Individual support activities included in the categories shown above are listed in the following table.

Category	Packages, Groups, and Lists
ldm	ldm, ldm-users-list
idd	gozer, idd, idd-brazil, idd-inject, idd-status, lsu-idd, ssec-idd, suominet, upc-idd
data	casestudies, casestudies-list, conduit, craft, craft-linda, craft-nws, datastream, difax, level2, noaaport
netcdf	netcdf, netcdfgroup-list, netcdf-hdf-list, netcdf-java, netcdf-perl
gempak	gempak, gembud-list
mcidas	mcdevelop, mcidas, mcidas-list
dods	dods, dods-core, dods-list, dods-tech, linda-dods
nws-changes	nws-changes
outreach	announce, barbados, cbmet, egrants, external, meteoforum, unidata, workshop
idv	idv, idvlist, metapps, visad-list
utilities	decoders, ldm-mcidas, udunits
miscellaneous	misc, network, platforms, wxp-list
thredds	java-dev, thredds
lead	lead

Comments

• As expected LEAD support continued to grow markedly. Even so, the LEAD numbers are an underestimate of its activity.
• Support numbers for individual packages, groups, and lists can be seen in full support statistics.

Some tentative conclusions

• The total support load for the UPC remains high and varies seasonally.
• Support required for the legacy visualization packages GEMPAK and McIDAS continues to be substantial with GEMPAK leading the way as the most widely distributed analysis application. As expected, the support required for the IDV is growing as more users are using the application.
• Support required for LDM, IDD, and data continues to grow slowly but shows variability throughout the year.
• Support for netCDF and outreach remains high.
• Taken as a whole, the support required for visualization packages (GEMPAK, IDV, and McIDAS) is comparable to the support required to receive data (LDM, IDD).
• Support for any package increases after a new version of the package is made available.

NOTE

These numbers and conclusions should not be taken too literally, for several reasons:

• For some packages, multiple responses in the same thread may be bundled into a single archived email. Other packages have each response in a thread counted separately.
• After a new release of software, there may be a flurry of the same or similar questions, which can be answered in separate emails or in a single mailing list posting.
• This counts primarily support of end users and site administrators, not developers. Support for other developers in projects such as OPeNDAP/DODS, THREDDS, McIDAS, GEMPAK, and IDV requires significant resources, but is difficult to assess.
• Not all support records were indexable for this report. Given this, the above numbers are an underestimate of the actual support being provided by the UPC.