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Hi all - <br>
<br>
I also agree, although I don't recall why we didn't set a minimum <br>
standard for compliance.<br>
<br>
On another detail about ACDD, the OceanSITES NetCDF spec follows<br>
ACDD, and lists ACDD in our 'Conventions' attribute (along with CF
and <br>
OceanSITES). We're currently trying to translate our metadata into a<br>
standard created by the OceanOPS group for GOOS (Global Ocean
Observing<br>
System), and I ran into a detail that really boggles my mind. <br>
<br>
The recommended ACDD attribute 'id' - presumably the 5th most
important of <br>
our attributes, based on its location in the table, is defined as
'An identifier for <br>
the data set...' Why we didn't name it 'data_set_id' is beyond me.
It's already <br>
been misread as a platform ID by the GOOS translators, and I had to
refer back to <br>
our format spec, which quotes ACDD, to understand why that wasn't
working <br>
as they'd expected it to.<br>
<br>
If this convention is ever updated, just in case I'm not involved, I
hereby <br>
recommend that this term be changed to something more meaningful; we<br>
can't expect people outside the ESIP community to look up the
definitions of<br>
our terms, so they should be explicit. <br>
<br>
Cheers - Nan<br>
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<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/12/21 11:24 AM, John Graybeal via
Esip-documentation wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:77CBCF10-1683-4190-A9D8-886B5C0C318B@sonic.net">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
And I fully agree with this perspective also, thanks Bob! (And
hi!)
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">john<br class="">
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On May 12, 2021, at 8:20 AM, Bob Simons - NOAA
Federal via Esip-documentation <<a
href="mailto:esip-documentation@lists.esipfed.org"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">esip-documentation@lists.esipfed.org</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">My personal
answer to your questions is:</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I think you may
have a misunderstanding of the ACDD attributes with
regard to compliance. ACDD (like CF) defines a set of
attributes. Yes, they are categorized as <span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"
class=""> </span><span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"
class="">"highly recommended", "recommended" or
"suggested", but note that none are "required". So
one might say that, technically, a dataset with none
of the ACDD attributes is compliant with ACDD. But
it's better to say that a file or dataset is
compliant if it uses the ACDD attributes (hopefully
all of the "highly recommended" and "recommended"
and many of the others) in a way that is consistent
with the attribute definitions. It is not an error
or a sign of non-compliance if a dataset doesn't
have one or more of the ACDD attributes. Note that
some of the attributes simply are not relevant to
some files, so those attributes simply shouldn't be
used for that file. In that case, their absence is
not an error. Also, ACDD (like CF) allows the file
to have other attributes, perhaps from other
conventions, so the presence of non-ACDD attributes
is not an error or sign of non-compliance.. </span></div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Regarding "<span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"
class="">the convention does not specify whether </span><span
style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"
class="">data is compliant with ACDD,</span>"</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Basically
correct. And there is no official ESIP ACDD compliance
checker which looks at a file or dataset's metadata to
determine its compliance. However, other groups have
made compliance checkers (i.e., software): search the
web for these. I think NOAA's IOOS has a compliance
checker which includes ACDD. NOAA's NCEI's checker may
also include ACDD checking. Note that compliance
checkers mostly just say "better" for files that have
more of the ACDD attributes (especially the "highly
recommended" ones), and "worse" for files that have
fewer ACDD attributes, which is what the checker's
authors are seeking, but not strictly what the ACDD
convention says. And note that compliance checkers
currently aren't actually smart enough to evaluate if
an attribute value is in compliance with the
attribute's specification or to evaluate the quality
of the metadata (e.g., does the "title" do a good job
of describing the dataset or is it a cryptic code that
only the creator understands?). In that sense, it will
take AI to make a checker that tests true compliance.
I think the only true non-compliance that one of the
current checkers might catch is if an ACDD attribute
is misspelled or has the wrong data type (e.g., text
when a number is expected).</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I hope that
helps.</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Best wishes.</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div>----------------------</div>
<div>John Graybeal</div>
<div>Administrator—ESIP Community Ontology Repository</div>
<div><a href="mailto:jbgraybeal@sonic.net" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jbgraybeal@sonic.net</a></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith Information Systems Specialist *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 *
*******************************************************</pre>
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