[GO-ESSP] RE: [Sgxml] Re: [mmi-tech] Units and NERC DataGrid

[Isenor, Anthony]

Hi everyone,

Here are a few random thoughts that cover the past collection of email. 

*  I also like the benevolent dictator approach.  But it does sometime weigh
heavy on the dictator.

*  I think an implemented service for the units would be much better than
the executable code technique.  However, we will have to recognize the need
to in some way manage the service.  Will it need a backup service provider
when the primary goes down?  How will we deal with suggested modifications?
Is this also the role of the dictator?  (All rhetorical questions)

*  In principle I agree with "rough consensus and running code"... but I
would not agree to the code and the written specification become to
disconnected.  I am a firm believer in documentation and I think it is
important not to have the code run to far ahead of the specification.  

*  As I understand the discussion around dimensionality and scale, the
difference here is the specification of "reasonable" units for a particular
parameter.  For example, you could express the distance from here to the sun
in picometres, but this is hardly reasonable.  I would suggest that this
type of check between the parameter and a list of "reasonable" units is a
second service.  It should not be incorporated into the unit conversion
simply because it is a completely different function.  

Two more thoughts on this topic.  First, I am wondering aloud (and thus
perhaps showing my lack of understanding) that the issue of reasonable units
may be related to significant digits.  Second, is the unit somehow related
to the memory of the number?  For example, I could quote the distance from
my house to my neighbour as some number in metres.  The number would likely
be in the 1-100 range.  Similarly, the distance I remember to the next city
is also in the 1-100 range, but now the units have changed to km.  So does
one's ability to remember the number relate to the "reasonable" units?
(Again, rhetorical).


<Anthony>


Anthony W. Isenor 
Defence R&D Canada - Atlantic 
PO Box 1012, 9 Grove Street 
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia 
Canada  B2Y 3Z7 

e-mail: anthony.isenor at drdc-rddc.gc.ca 
Ph:  (902) 426-3100 ext. 106 
Fax: (902) 426-9654 




-----Original Message-----
From: Deepsea Dawn [mailto:dawn at dusk.geo.orst.edu]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 3:27 PM
To: rkl at bodc.ac.uk
Cc: sgxml at biwebs.nerc-liv.ac.uk; rkl at bodc.ac.uk; RobertM at dessci.com;
rlake at galdosinc.com; lbartolo at kent.edu; mmi-tech at mbari.org;
chris.little at metoffice.gov.uk; NERC-datagrid at ncas.ac.uk;
GO-Essp at ucar.edu; caron at unidata.ucar.edu
Subject: [Sgxml] Re: [mmi-tech] Units and NERC DataGrid



On Monday, December 6, 2004, at 02:40 AM, Roy Lowry wrote:

>
> I also feel that what we need is more along the lines of a semantic web
> resource rather than a downloadable executable approach: in other words
> a units ontology that provides a units vocabulary plus the knowledge
> about which units may be interconverted and how.  Such an ontology 
> could
> be interlinked with parameter vocabularies indicating the subset of
> units that may sensibly be associated with particular parameters.
>
> Before embarking on building such an ontology for NERC DataGrid, I am
> circulating this e-mail far and wide (apologies for  multiple postings)
> to obtain answers to two simple questions.
>
> What do you think of this approach?
>
> More importantly:
>
> Does anybody know of anybody who is building/has built such an ontology
> and can save me a job?

Hello Roy - Nice to "meet" you on today's MMI telecon. I like the 
approach indeed, and my Oregon Coastal Atlas 
(http://www.coastalatlas.net ) colleagues and I are trying to work up a 
proposal to build such an ontology but it won't be submitted until 
Spring 2005, and it will be very limited to coastal mapping, 
geological, GIScience, resource management vocabularies. However, 
your's will probably be built before our proposal is even written so we 
will keep in touch!

Cheers,

Dawn
------
Dawn Wright | Professor | Department of Geosciences
Oregon State University | Corvallis, OR 97331-5506
http://dusk.geo.orst.edu | 541-737-1229 phone | 541-737-1200 fax

_______________________________________________
SGXML mailing list
SGXML at mailman.nerc-bidston.ac.uk
http://mailman.nerc-bidston.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/sgxml
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucar.edu/pipermail/go-essp/attachments/20041207/5aee2558/attachment.htm