[galeon] OGC Technical Committee Meeting Highlights

• To: CF-netCDF SWG <CF-NetCDF-1.0.SWG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Unidata GALEON <galeon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Unidata Staff <staff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Olga Wilhelmi <olgaw@xxxxxxxx>, Kevin Sampson <ksampson@xxxxxxxx>, Jennifer Boehnert <boehnert@xxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [galeon] OGC Technical Committee Meeting Highlights
• From: Ben Domenico <bendomenico@xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:16:59 -0600

Hi all,

While last week's OGC Technical Committee (TC) meetings did not have
crucial decision points hanging in the balance, there was some news to
report and good discussion of what the next steps should be.

The agenda ended up as:

•Celebration of OGC Adoption of Enhanced Data Model extension to the
netCDFcore standard
•Status update:
–CF extension to the netCDF core (vote started)
–Uncertainty convention discussion paper (approved)
–CF-netCDF encoding extension to the WCS specification (next)
•Harmonization with standardization efforts of:
–OPeNDAP
–HDF5
–CF
•Coordination with external communities
–Unidata scheduling seminar on ISO metadata and uncertainty conventions
–ESIP Federation offers their wiki for inter-community discussions

The formal announcement of the adoption of the Enhanced (netCDF4) Data
Model as an OGC standard was great news as was the fact that 60-day TC vote
has been started on the CF conventions extension to the core.  The proposed
Uncertainty Conventions discussion paper was formally approved as well.

The next major step (CF-netCDF encoding extension to Web Coverage Service)
interestingly enough takes us back to our initial OGC objective which was
to estaablish CF-netCDF as an official encoding option for WCS.   In the
meantime, we have an additional major accomplishment of having netCDF as an
OGC encoding standard.

There was general agreement that it is important to maintain harmonization
among our OGC netCDF standardization efforts and the work in the OPeNDAP,
HDF and CF communities.   But there were not specific recommendations for
how to achieve this.   There was encouragement for scheduling a Unidata
seminar on  ISO metadata and uncertainty conventions and to continue
discussions with the ESIP Federation regarding the use of their wiki and
conferencing facilities for discussions that include other communities in
addition to the OGC.

At the meeting and via email, additional possible topics that the CF-netCDF
SWG might take up include:

•XML encodings
–ncML: netCDF XML
–ncML-GML: CF-netCDF XML encoding with cross-mapping to ISO 19139/GML
•CF-netCDF data model extension to encode the OGC EO specification (ESA
proposal)
•Uncertainty specification for the netCDF Enhanced (netCDF4) data model
•RESTful APIs for CF-netCDF
•CF-netCDF data model in web services data access broker layer?


There was no general consensus at the meeting regarding a priority order
for these.   But there was a general sense that it would be worth revising
the SWG charter if need be to take up these topics.

-- Ben

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