[Go-essp-tech] qctool deployed

[Bryan Lawrence]

hi Folks

Dominic has deployed the qctool for entering quality information at 
http://qc.cmip5.ceda.ac.uk  (just one more "c" than the questionnaire).

The front page is open, to get further, you use the same access criteria 
you use for access to the questionnaire.

This tool is for *recording* information. It has an atom feed, so other 
tools can use the information, and we expect humans and (other) tools to 
*generate* the information. Currently one would have to enter such 
information manually (although it does allow upload of or links to plots 
and logfiles). A future version will allow one to post an xml upload. 
Future versions will also allow qctool instances deployed to federate 
with each other.

(On access control: in the next few weeks I am hopeful that the ESG 
openid federation will "go-live", which means that an ESG access control 
token should allow access to either the questionnaire or the qctool).

The qctool has had *no* user testing. It might break horribly.  It is 
being backed up daily ... but ...  It's much simpler than the 
questionnaire, so hopefully we will fix things in much more real time, 
and have little problem persisting information (and, in the short term, 
should we fail, it's less likely to be a problem to re-enter ... 
particularly given it is trivial to get xml versions of the material 
entered from the tool).

(I expect it to change even over the next few days, but these changes 
should just be adding functionality and improving look-n-feel, things 
like a title etc :-) ... but we wanted it it out NOW, since we said we 
would :-).

Feedback on usage gratefully accepted (to the metafor list and/or 
metafor trac site using keyword qctool).

Building this has exposed some interesting issues, both with the CIM UML 
(ConCIM) with the CIM serialisation (ApCIM) that we will explore with 
Allyn at the upcoming metafor services meeting.

Cheers
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