Decoder Packages Robb Kambic Unidata Program Center April 23 2007
The Java Grib Libraries are mainly in maintenance mode since the official release last year. The main additions have been new tables to accommodate new datasets and default tables added for datasets for which the libraries don't have a table. Also, the libraries can now expand Quasi/Thin grids, and an extra field was added to the library indexes to designate ensemble runs. Some work was also done so the libraries can process ECMWF files.
There have been 2 releases of the netCDF-Decoders package in the period from August 2006 to March 2007. The first release fixed a ua2nc decoder bug that resulted in the data going into the wrong file for hour 23, as a result of an LDM bug, which has also been fixed. The second release added a -c option so the Metar decoder can be run on archived data permitting the user to designate year and month. Before the -c option, the decoder could only be run on real-time data.
Work is in progress to create a Metar server that will be able to handle queries on the data and to return the data in different formats. The return type formats will be text, XML, HTML, THREDDS Catalog, and a netCDF file/object. Work is ongoing to create a Radar Level 2 server that will return a THREDDS Catalog.
The BUFR Java library remains in beta release.