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Hi all, These are really valuable discussions. In my mind they are just as important as the formal standards that result from that part of the process. In the various OGC working groups where I've been active , I think we all have a much better understanding of the other subgroups needs and their approaches to satisfying those needs. I certainly count myself among those who have received one heck of an education over the last few years. In the current discussion though, one point I still don't grasp is what is to be gained by NOT specifying CF-netCDF as A standard for binary encoding. Not THE standard necessarily, but one possible formal standard option. It's as if people think that CF-netCDF is more likely to be replaced by a newly minted standard if CF-netCDF is not declared a standard. Those of us who've been at this long enough to remember the declaration of the ISO OSI transport layer in the late 70s realize that the non-standard TCP still has a modest following in many communities. In the case at hand, I'm really convinced that it's a good idea to build on proven technologies while AT THE SAME TIME working on specifications (e.g., SOS, WFS, WCS, SWE common, ...) that may be more comprehensive, fill gaps and address shortcomings of the existing approaches -- approaches that have been shown to work, but may not be all things to all people. As we proceed, it's essential to keep this valuable dialog going so the individual components have a chance of fitting together in some sort of coherent whole in the end. -- Ben On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 3:26 PM, John Graybeal <graybeal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > On Aug 24, 2009, at 10:42 AM, Steve Hankin wrote: > > NetCDF (& associated tooling) is arguably emerging as the definitive > standard for interchange of 3-dimensional, time-dependent fluid earth system > datasets. > > > For the members of the NetCDF community who favor this argument, may I > point out there are other communities that say similar things about their > solutions? And I'm not referring to OGC, which to my knowledge has never > pitched SWE (or anything else) as a straight replacement for NetCDF, > notwithstanding Alex's claims for SWE's representational capabilities. I > mean, it's not like apples and zebras, but the two seem really different to > me. > I like NetCDF for a lot of things, including many-dimensional and > time-dependent data representations. > But terms like "definitive standard" carry their own hyperbolic weight, > especially in a world of multiple standard bodies and many different kinds > of system requirements. > So it seems to me there will not be *a* winner, either in this argument or > in the earth science data management > community's choice of technologies. Thus, I'm much more interested in > understanding the characteristics of each, so as to use them well and maybe > even improve them. (Hmm, I suppose that would explain my project > affiliation....) > > John > > > --------------- > John Graybeal > Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org > graybeal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > > >
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