[ESP] ESP: Meeting Agenda

[Glenn Rutledge]

Thanks Bryan,
One clarification- a unified Web Presence is not a goal of mine 
(either).  That goal was taken as dvlpd at the meeting as a way to try 
to consolidate efforts for funding (I think).  You may recall my earlier 
msg so stating.  Glenn


Bryan Lawrence wrote:
> Hi Folks
> 
> 
>>May I suggest that you go back to our NOMADS meetings in the Fall of
>>2002 at CDC where I believe most have agreed to some basics:
>>
>>http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/nomads/faq.html
>>
>>You'll notice one of the goals is to have a Unified Web presence.  
> 
> 
> The latter might well be a NOMADS goal, it's certainly not a goal of the ESP 
> community, I also think it important to remember that this is an 
> international meeting ...
> 
> I think what we were gathering together for was to try and address what we 
> need for interoperable portals. In particular, one of the aims was for 
> international interoperable portals, which means there are some constraints 
> on us ...
> 
> For example, one constraint for me is that if we want a wide range of European 
> data, OpenDAP is a problem until we sort out the access control issue. Sure 
> we can put some data up behind opendap ... but frankly, I'm not likely to put 
> a lot of effort into a portal that can't deal with a much larger proportion 
> of the data I have ... (using opendapg opens up some other possibilities).
> 
> So, I think we should be addressing what we need for interoperable portals, 
> and sharing information about portal technology. Much of this is indeed 
> covered by the nomads faq and the previous emails we've had.
> 
> However, I think Ethan has summarised it best:
> 
> 
>>1) What are the desired capabilities of the portal framework?
>>2) What information does the portal need to satisfy those capabilities?
>>      From there we can attack the painful question of
>>3) How do various standards/formats map into the required information set?
> 
> 
> to which I would add 
> 4) what technologies are becoming available (as opposed to in use now) ...
> 5) What is current best practice? i.e. let's talk about the cookbook!  It   is 
> a key part of what we need ... but we should imagine it will evolve, and it 
> should list the warts in our current approach.
> 
> I think we could have two half days of talks in the morning, and workshops in 
> the afternoon, where we discuss the key issues.
> 
> So, if I was talking, I would talk about the NERC DataGrid data model + 
> metadata model, and the concept of harvesting DIFS as a model for 
> interoperability at the search level.
> 
> What I would like to hear about is more about
> - thredds at a technical level, roadmap, timescales  (Ethan?)
> - opendapg and the possibility of using it a grid-based portal (Don?)
> - the possible use of chef in a portal environment (Dean?)
> - LAS road maps and timescales (Steve?)
> 
> What I think we could usefully discuss is:
> - What we *all* think the problems are with portal building ... and where we 
> have solutions, make sure we get them documented in the cookbook.  
> - how our various concepts will work with HDF
> - what about observational data; is the CF convention adequate, if not why 
> not?
> - what role to international standards have in all of this? (I would recommend 
> that we have Andrew Woolf talk on this subject to the meeting).
> - can we make use of the DIF (either as is, or modified) as more than just 
> something we "send off to GCMD". (For example, we are planning on making it a 
> fundamental part of a distributed search capability in the NDG, we can tell 
> you about this in more detail than last time ...).
> 
> Bryan
>