Difference between revisions of "Creating NetCDF CF Files"
Line 10: | Line 10: | ||
The reason to use CF convention: Enable plug and play connectivity. | The reason to use CF convention: Enable plug and play connectivity. | ||
− | Well done NetCDF files are human readable. | + | Well done NetCDF files are human readable. After all: what could dimension longitude mean besides longitude. If you get data in NetCDF format, it's usually fairly easy to see what really is there. |
+ | |||
+ | It's also easy to write a generic browser, that can display every variable for you. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But since a lot of data in NetCDF files have geographical meaning, a graphical viewer should be able to draw the data ion the map, on it's own. This involves, at minimum: | ||
+ | |||
+ | * finding the three grographical dimensions | ||
+ | * Finding time dimension, if any | ||
+ | * Understanding the geographical projection | ||
+ | |||
+ | From any generic NetCDF, this requires human intelligence. After all, the n-dimensional data variables, dimensional variables and other metadata variables look precisely the same for the program code. There are legion of ways to code projection information, and decoding it reliably is very difficult. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Conventions come to rescue. For example, if a variable has attribute axis='X', there's only one interpretation for the values of this variable: it must have just one dimension, and the values are points on X-axis along that dimension. No more guesswork, and wrong guesses, for the programmers. | ||
== Verifying NetCDF-CF Files == | == Verifying NetCDF-CF Files == |
Revision as of 15:46, July 16, 2009
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Back to WCS Access to netCDF Files
Back to WCS NetCDF Development
NetCDF-CF conventions
The reason to use CF convention: Enable plug and play connectivity.
Well done NetCDF files are human readable. After all: what could dimension longitude mean besides longitude. If you get data in NetCDF format, it's usually fairly easy to see what really is there.
It's also easy to write a generic browser, that can display every variable for you.
But since a lot of data in NetCDF files have geographical meaning, a graphical viewer should be able to draw the data ion the map, on it's own. This involves, at minimum:
- finding the three grographical dimensions
- Finding time dimension, if any
- Understanding the geographical projection
From any generic NetCDF, this requires human intelligence. After all, the n-dimensional data variables, dimensional variables and other metadata variables look precisely the same for the program code. There are legion of ways to code projection information, and decoding it reliably is very difficult.
Conventions come to rescue. For example, if a variable has attribute axis='X', there's only one interpretation for the values of this variable: it must have just one dimension, and the values are points on X-axis along that dimension. No more guesswork, and wrong guesses, for the programmers.
Verifying NetCDF-CF Files
Since CF-1.0 conventions contain a lot of definitions, verifying them by machine is necessary. There is a fairly complete compliancechecker online
Creating NetCDF-CF files using NetCDF Markup Language
NCML utlilities here.