[Go-essp-tech] Minutes: 1/6/10 Output Variable Telecon

[Bryan Lawrence]

Hi Sylvia, Karl

On Wednesday 06 January 2010 17:40:55 Sylvia Murphy wrote:
> The spreadsheet that Gerry created listed the variable by mindmap scientific virtual component.  So while your document probably lists something like Humidity by the realm Atmosphere while the METAFOR spreadsheet lists the variable under a subcomponent like the Dynamical Core.  
> 
> The ESG will be displaying all these subcomponents because that is what will be coming in via the questionnaire, not just the realms, and that his where the output variables would be listed if we used METAFORs method.  

This isn't quite right I think ... but close ... more below. (It's what we might have wanted to do though ...)

On Wednesday 06 January 2010 17:23:29 Sylvia Murphy wrote:
> HI Bryan,
> 
> You said "i think the output variables that actually appear in the dataset need to get TIED [my emphasis] to the model components".
> 
> The way ESG should work, is that there will be a link (on the outputs tab) in the model metadata display pointing to the datasets.  I believe the variable name will be listed in those names. 

The question is how and where is the information gathered that makes these tabs work ...

> If a user clicks on one of those links he will get a lot of metadata about the files including the CF information about the variables.   
> 
> When you say "tied" is this what you were thinking or do you want to see output variables listed (as a list) on the model metadata display?  If so we are going to have to find a way to have the two sides of ESG, the dataset side and the model metadata side communicate with each other.

So what I mean is that in order to know what variables have actually been output we need to do something like:

- parse the thredds catalogs to find a list of atomic drs names or tuple equivalents which include hte model name, the experiment, an ensemble number (if necessary), the realm and a variable name (plus other stuff including version number, but to keep it simple for this email we'll only worry about the above)

The key point is that we will only know a (realm, variable name) pair, we wont know any more detail about sub components *and that's appropriate* ... because the subcomponent descriptions may not map onto physical software that writes output ...

So, to get the information to populate those tabs, we need to *tie* the variable name (and their datasets) that we get from the data parsing to the appropriate realm (plus simulation etc)  in the model metadata world (metafor+curator/esg).

Does that help explain?

So the important thing to remember is that Gerry's spreadsheet is informative, but the actual data is authorative as to this matching (which I call *tie*ing) ... which we then build as rdf instances in the esg/owl world.

Bryan
-- 
Bryan Lawrence
Director of Environmental Archival and Associated Research
(NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre and NCEO/NERC NEODC)
STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Phone +44 1235 445012; Fax ... 5848; 
Web: home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence