re: Are you interested in XML from the National Weather Service?

• To: Frank Richards <Francis.Richards@xxxxxxxx>
• Subject: re: Are you interested in XML from the National Weather Service?
• From: Robb Kambic <rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:58:29 -0700 (MST)

Frank,

<snip>

The National Weather Service is exploring the possibility of
improving its services by providing information using
Extensible Markup Language (XML).  One of our most important
goals is to structure our XML information so it maximizes
the benefit to our users.  As a result, we'd like to solicit
your thoughts on how we might proceed.  To do so, we'd
appreciate it if you would let us know:

1) Would you like the NWS to provide information in XML?

Yes, it would beneficial for product use and it would provide more generic
(XML) processors for reports.


2) Specifically, what current products would be most
valuable to you in XML?  Where do you suggest we start?

The surface, upperair, and buoy. ( actually all text type reports ).

- validation tags, to designate bulletin correctness.
- the bulletins should have the header info and reports delineated by
XML tags.
- the reports parts should have XML tags between them.  ?

Currently I have created perl decoders to parse the text bulletins, there's
too much code needed to parse the bulletins correctly. Also, the amount of
code slows the parsing speed.

3) What possible future products/information would you like
the NWS to provide in XML?

Maybe a comment here after the text type bulletins have XML tags.

4) What other thoughts or suggestions would you like to
share with us?

Currently I'm working on the THREDDS project that ingests the nwsgt
products. The text products can be requested from a THREDDS server and it
returns XML format. There are some groups that are using the
returns to populate Java applets, etc.

Here's a MetarServer, the names are not set in stone. I'v been trying
to standardize the naming convention but it's hard.

http://motherlode.ucar.edu:8080/thredds/cgi-bin/MetarServer.pl?format=xml&stn=KDEN&time=latest

Sample output:

<station name="KDEN">
   <parameter name="report" value="KDEN 221753Z 14010G17KT 10SM FEW080 SCT140 
SCT250 19/M04 A3008
" udunits="text" />
   <parameter name="datetime" value="2004-03-22 17:53:00Z" units="YYYY-MM-DD 
hh:mm:ssZ" />
   <parameter name="wind_from_direction" value="140" units="degree" />
   <parameter name="wind_gust" value="9" units="m/s" />
   <parameter name="wind_speed" value="5" units="m/s" />
   <parameter name="visibility_in_air" value="10" units="statue miles" />
   <parameter name="low_cloud_area_fraction" value="0.1" units="fraction" />
   <parameter name="low_cloud_area_height" value="2400" units="meters" />
   <parameter name="middle_cloud_area_fraction" value="0.3" units="fraction" />
   <parameter name="middle_cloud_area_height" value="4200" units="meters" />
   <parameter name="high_cloud_area_fraction" value="0.3" units="fraction" />
   <parameter name="high_cloud_area_height" value="7500" units="meters" />
   <parameter name="air_pressure" value="1018.67" units="hectopascal"/>
   <parameter name="air_temperature" value="19" units="Celsius />
   <parameter name="dew_point_temperature" value="-4" units="Celsius />
</station>

5) Would you be willing to provide us with feedback as we
evolve our use of XML?  If so, please furnish us with
contact information so we can follow up with you.

Yes.

Robb Kambic
rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Unidata/UCAR1

Thank you  -- we appreciate your input.

Frank Richards

Robb...
==============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
==============================================================================