NcML and CDL are able to provide a human readable description of a particular
instance of a product but are not designed to describe a more generic product
format specification.
The format specification would need to handle elements with values only known
at runtime (dimensions, scaling and offset attributes, etc.), the NetCDF model
used, the underlying storage layer, aspects of chunking and compression, etc.
Basically everything you'd want to be able to construct NetCDF product
instances.
Having looked at a number of NetCDF format description documents, there doesn't
seem to be a standard way of describing a NetCDF format specification. In
general, the specification authors resort to either breaking the format into a
tabulated description or using a modified/annotated NcML or CDL.
Is there a preferred or standard way of describing NetCDF formats or has
anybody looked at developing something like a standard XML product
specification to do this?
Best regards,
Tim Patterson
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Tim Patterson
Instrument Data Simulation Expert
Product Engineering/Test Data Coordination
MTG Programme
GEO Division
EUMETSAT
Eumetsat-Allee 1
64295 Darmstadt
Germany
Tel: +49 6151 807 487
Fax: +49 6151 807 7
E-mail: timothy.patterson@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: www.eumetsat.int
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