[Esip-documentation] Let's get rid of spatial and temporal bounds in ACDD

[Armstrong, Edward M (398M)]

Hi Ken and all.

Good points.  I think we are near a consensus for recommending actions on software developers to update and modify appropriate global attributes.

Good point on the netcdf3 compression…..need to uncompress to read anything in the file.  Even netCDF4 you will still need to uncompress the coordinate variables which can be large in size (real*4 or similar)…takes a very small amount of time (compared to the entire file externally compressed like netcdf3), but over many many files this time is not insignificant either.

On Mar 20, 2014, at 4:17 AM, Kenneth S. Casey - NOAA Federal <kenneth.casey at noaa.gov<mailto:kenneth.casey at noaa.gov>> wrote:

Hi All -

Perhaps this group could lay out a simple "proposal" of sorts… that could be discussed and refined in this thread, and agreed to at ESIP Rocky Mountain High this summer if not sooner.  Perhaps that proposal would look something like:

"Dear Software Providers:  Please do the right thing with global attributes, and properly update spatial and temporal bounding attributes when you modify a netCDF file and either re-write or create a new one.  While you are at it, add some info to the history attribute too like you are supposed to.  In the meantime, dear community, be wary of global attributes that relate to coordinate variables.. trust the coordinate variables and if you notice a discrepancy with their corresponding global attributes SCREAM VERY LOUDLY at the provider of the software which generated that netCDF file."

Specific actions could then be requested of the big players to make the appropriate updates to their code.

I think we need global attributes in general, even ones relating to coordinate variables.  Everything said here about coordinate attributes actually applies more generally…  many, many, of the global attributes can and should be updated depending on the provenance of the file and who did what to it.  The only difference is that the attributes relating to coordinate variables can actually be tested against the data.

I'd add one other point… while computationally doing a max/min on the coordinate variables is not too terrible, much of the time (esp. with netCDF-3) you have to decompress the entire file first, and that is computationally terrible for large numbers of large files that are externally compressed (like we have with GHRSST, for example… loving that GHRSST Data Specification v2 now uses netCDF-4 with internal compression!).

Ken



On Mar 19, 2014, at 11:12 PM, "Signell, Richard" <rsignell at usgs.gov<mailto:rsignell at usgs.gov>> wrote:

Gang,
I understand the importance having the bounds information in metadata
-- in fact we start our workflows by querying catalog services which
uses bounding box information contained in the ISO metadata.  But this
ISO metadata was calculated by ncISO by reading the CF coordinate
variables via OPeNDAP, and the metadata points to the OPeNDAP service
endpoint, so I know that the bounds data is correct.

It would seem that NASA, OCEANSITES, and others could use this
approach as well, which would yield the same functionality as reading
metadata from the actual dataset, but without the drawbacks.

Having read all the arguments so far,  I'm going to continue
recommending that people not write these bounds attributes into their
datasets, because I remain convinced they do our community more harm
than good.  But I'll explain to them the arguments for and against.

-Rich

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Armstrong, Edward M (398M)
<Edward.M.Armstrong at jpl.nasa.gov<mailto:Edward.M.Armstrong at jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:
Hello,

Just to continue this thread and the way a popular tool works......I checked the
output of LAS and it does not update any attributes...just inherits what it
natively subsetted.  Its includes this global attribute:

:FERRET_comment = "File written via LAS. Attributes are inherited from
originating dataset";



On Mar 18, 2014, at 10:42 AM, Ted Habermann <thabermann at hdfgroup.org<mailto:thabermann at hdfgroup.org>> wrote:

All,

Just wanted to point out that CF is really use metadata used by tools that
are actually reading the data. ACDD are discovery conventions originally
motivated by the lack of discovery information included in CF. The opinion
of the CF mailing list is, therefore, not relevant in this discussion.

I agree with Ken and Ed... There are two sets of metadata because they serve
two communities. We need to do our best to make sure they are both correct.

Seems like the netCDF download service in THREDDS is a good place to
start... Does anyone know how it behaves with global attributes? What about
LAS?

Ted

On Mar 18, 2014, at 10:52 AM, Armstrong, Edward M (398M)
<Edward.M.Armstrong at jpl.nasa.gov<mailto:Edward.M.Armstrong at jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:

Hi Steve,

I do agree with Ken and Ted on this issue....also from experience working with
granules in a large data center.

I think the crux of the counter argument is that from the perspective of the
data producer we want them to add more metadata, not less to the native
granule.  And many people do use these global bounds in some context, mostly
just looking at the granules through a browser like ncdump and Panoply.
Space and time bounds is just a natural thing most people look at in a
granule when they first acquire it.

The key, then is to recognize if the granule has been altered by a tool, to
treat the bounds with caution.  Nan had a great idea that tools should point
back to the original unaltered granule.  I think this is first requirement
for any tool that does modification to the granule via subsetting or
similar.

And the next step is to encourage the updating of global bounds by any tool
or aggregation operations. I do agree that is a challenge.


On Mar 18, 2014, at 8:51 AM, Steve Hankin <steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov<mailto:steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov>> wrote:

Hi Ken,

I think you are actually agreeing with me, rather than Ted.  The text that I
proposed did not say geo-bounds attributes should be forbidden.  It said
that they should be used with caution -- only in situations where they are
unlikely to lead to corruption.

It is recommended that 1) the use of these global attributes be restricted
to files whose contents are known to be completely stable -- i.e. files very
unlikely to be aggregated into larger collections;  and 2) as a matter of
best practice, software reading CF files should ignore these global
attributes; instead it should compute the geo-spatial bounds by scanning the
coordinate ranges found within the CF dataset, itself.

These words can certainly be adjusted and improved.  (The discussion that I
am still hoping will happen!)  The intent is to apply common sense,
practical thinking so that our interoperability frameworks works in
practice.

You have argued that at NODC you *need* these geo-bounds attribute in order
to avoid impossibly large processing burdens of examining the data, itself.
What would your strategy be if  the attributes proved not to be trustworthy?
Perhaps within the community of satellite swath folks you can agree that you
will all maintain these attributes faithfully.  Great.  Do so.  That is in
the spirit of the discussion that we should be having.  But should you speak
for the modeling community, too?  (I presume the NODC granules must be swath
data, because if they were grids, then the processing required to determine
the bounds from the data is negligible.)

Lets look at the context of this discussion.  What we are seeing here is a
collision between the priorities of two communities involved in developing
standards. Our emails here are largely confined to one of the communities.
Envision taking this discussion topic to the CF email list.  I predict what
you would see is that the potential of  redundant, static global attributes
to create corruption to the datasets would fly up as a giant red flag.  It
is not only aggregation operations that will lead to corruption, it is also
subsetting operations -- the most routine of all netCDF operations, and
performed by generic utilities that are unaware of CF or ACDD.  These are
glaring, unsolved problems in the use of these geo-bounds.  There is such a
strong case to be more nuanced when standardizing attributes that we can
plainly see are going to lead to many corrupted datasets.  What is the
counter-argument for ignoring these self-evident problems?

   - Steve

===========================================


On 3/18/2014 3:48 AM, Kenneth S. Casey - NOAA Federal wrote:

Hi All -

I've been silent but following this thread carefully.  Time to jump in now.

I concur with Ted's statements below.  I would characterize his responses as
a good example of combating the "Tyranny of the Or". It doesn't have to be
one solution or the other.  For us at NODC, processing literally tens and
maybe hundreds of millions of netCDF granules, having easily and quickly
read global attributes is not a convenience. It is a practical necessity.
We also like the idea of encouraging softwarians to write better software.
Corrupting attributes through negligence and inaction is not acceptable.
Fix it. If they can't, we can encourage our users to stop using that
software.

I love the idea of building the congruence checker into the ACDD rubric and
catalog cleaner, and I think an "ncdump -bounds" option, where the result is
calculated from the actual bounds, is terrific too.  These kinds of
additions to exiting tools would help encourage better practices and would
give us some simple tools to improve our management of netCDF data.

Ken



On Mar 17, 2014, at 4:35 PM, Ted Habermann <thabermann at hdfgroup.org<mailto:thabermann at hdfgroup.org>> wrote:

All,

This discussion is driving me bananas!

I would argue (vehemently) against any recommendation that says anything
like "don't add bounds elements to your global attributes". To encourage
people to provide less metadata is just not acceptable. Much more palatable
to
1) offer a general warning to users - all data and metadata have varying
quality - test before you leap and know how the data you have was processed.
2) to start a concerted effort to encourage software developers to think
about the metadata in the files they create and
3) add a congruence check into the ACDD rubric / catalog cleaner, it would
be very interesting to know how many datasets in the "clean" catalog suffer
from inconsistencies between the data and the global attributes.

As I said earlier, there are much more significant problems in ACDD/CF
metadata land than this one. Hopefully they will generate the same amount of
interest as we move forward.

Ted


On Mar 17, 2014, at 1:22 PM, Steve Hankin <steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov<mailto:steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov>> wrote:

Hi John, Rich,

The 'bananas' analogy fits right into the discussion below, so I'm not
commenting on I specifically.    I like it as a good metaphor for the
question we are debating.

On 3/17/2014 10:51 AM, John Graybeal wrote:

Steve,

Let me see if you take issue with my simplified version of what you said:

"NetCDF attributes should never be used to describe value-based or
processing-specific features of any data set, because data processors (tools
and people) can't help but corrupt derivative data sets with that
information. "


I like this line of reasoning for understanding the issues, John.  But the
above is not a sufficiently nuanced statement to capture what I have
advocated.  Thy this:

"Broad standardization of NetCDF attributes that contain value-based or
processing-derived information about a data set, should be avoided -- used
only if there is no reasonable alternative.  Use of such attributes breaks
the 'backwards compatibility' goals that evolving software standards should
follow.  It 'breaks' existing systems and places a burden upon future
systems that may modify or extend the contents of that dataset."

Standardization of such attributes for special communities that run custom
systems, presents no serious problems.  CF allows itself to be arbitrarily
extended for such special purposes.  Each community will look after its own
software quality.  But when you undertake a broad standardization of such
attributes, you are placing a burden on software systems over which you have
no knowledge and no control.


Don't get me wrong; I think this presents a consistent philosophy in
response to today's practical realities. As of today, with 5 out of 6 tools
failing the 'metadata consistency' test, it likely minimizes the ratio of
bad metadata in the wild.

thank you for this.


What it does *not* do is establish a mature, flexible, interoperable,
metadata-aware community of practice going forward. It also does not fix the
problem caused by these tools, it just eliminates the most-likely-to-fail
attributes (from any standard, forevermore). And it directly undercuts the
greatest value of a self-describing data format, the easy-to-access
description.

As Ted pointed out, the issue is much broader and deeper than this one
particular use case.  Dynamically changing datasets (including the 'virtual
datasets' created through aggregation) create a class of problems that are
in fundamental conflict with static metadata representations.   Do we agree
that that virtual datasets are not going to go away?   The class of datasets
that CF is most centrally committed to are often extremely large and evolve
over time (both the 'C' and the 'F' in CF).

The fact that much software pre-dates the standards is a red herring.


Really?  We watch standards self-destruct time after time because they fail
to address pragmatic considerations of this very type.   Backwards
compatibility deserves to be a paramount consideration.  Do we really
disagree on this?

Software that takes any self-describing file, modifies the contents, yet
passes through the original description _without validation_ to the output
file, will almost always produce a broken output file. This isn't a feature,
nor inevitable; it's a bug. Our underlying challenge is to fix that problem.


And in the meantime, we still have to maintain ALL the metadata affected by
that problem, not just the CF coordinate bounds. So we should fix all that
software soon. (As I can think of 3 trivial fixes off the top of my head,
I'm not sure why previous beat-arounds didn't induce change. It's time. And
it's a lot easier than modifying all the software to include statements in
the files about how unreliable the metadata is.)

I agree with you on this ... at least in principle:  Those responsible for
the software systems should make a good faith effort to upgrade them in
response to evolving standards.  But they may simply lack the resources.  Or
they may be unable to fit the fixes into hard-pressed schedules for some
time to come.  In the meantime we have corrupted metadata.  We are living in
lean times for our community.  Considerations like this have to be a two-way
street:  those responsible for evolving software standards need to minimize
so-called 'enhancements' that break existing software.  They need to look
for alternatives first.

   - Steve

John

On Mar 17, 2014, at 09:23, Steve Hankin <steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov<mailto:steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov>> wrote:

Greetings Ted!

As rants go, the message you sent on Friday was pretty restrained.   I
particularly like your suggestion that the UAF Catalog Cleaner could detect
and report corrupted ACDD geo-positioning attributes.  We will see what we
can do with that idea.  (aside:  Is there a way to ask ncISO when it has
found this form of corruption in a dataset?)

It would be nice if we could all wrestle this topic to a workable
compromise.  I agree that the problem should be "fixed at the source".   But
characterizing the source of the problem as "sloppy data management" seems
off the mark.   This data management problem didn't exist until we created
the potential for easy corruption by defining easily-corrupted, redundant
information in the CF datasets.

The duplication of information between the global attributes and the CF
coordinates is an 'attractive nuisance'.   No matter how much we exhort data
managers to clean up their act, the problem is going to continue showing up
over and over and over.   Some of the data management tools that stumble
into this problem are not even CF-aware;  generic netCDF utilities like nco
create this form of corruption.   Offhand I can think of 6 independent
pieces of software that perform aggregations on CF datasets.  Five of these
predate the use of the ACDD geo-bounds attributes within CF files;  all of
these exhibit this corruption.  Ed's example is yet another.

Our underlying challenge is to expose the CF coordinate bounds for easy use
wherever that information is needed for purposes of data discovery.   The
ncISO tool contributed by your group has addressed this very successfully
for formal ISO metadata.  (A big thanks to you, Dave N. et. al..)  There is
similar excellent potential to address the more informal cases through
software.  You mentioned the limitations of "ncdump  -h" as an illustration.
How about code contributed to Unidata to create "ncdump -bounds"?    This
would be a smaller effort with a more robust outcome than to ask all current
and future developers of CF aggregation techniques to make accommodation for
the redundant, easily corrupted attributes in their datasets.

   - Steve

===========================================

On 3/14/2014 1:14 PM, Ted Habermann wrote:

All,

I agree with Ed and John, this is a software tool problem that should be
fixed at the source. The description of the history attribute has always
implied that it should be updated when a file is processed (even though,
IMHO, it is almost entirely unsuited for doing that). The same is true for
many others (listed by John G. earlier in this thread). The current practice
is sloppy data management that, from the sound of this thread, is pervasive
in the community. Of course, ncISO provides a very easy way to identify
occurrences of this problem throughout a THREDDS catalog. The "Catalog
Cleaner" is another venue for quantifying the damage. CF is a community
standard. Maybe it is time for the community to recommend providing correct
metadata with the files and to avoid developers and datasets that don't.

A related problem is that the bounds calculated from the data are only
available if you read the data. Many users may not be equipped to easily
read the data during a data discovery process. They may not want to go
beyond ncdump -x -h (or something like that) before they fire up the whole
netCDF machine...

BTW, this problem is trivial relative to that associated with virtual
datasets created through aggregation. In those cases, there is no clear
mechanism for providing meaningful metadata, although the rich inventory we
created several years ago comes close... That situation is much more prone
to mistakes as all semblance of the historic record is wiped out.

Its Friday, and spring... As Dave said last week, a good time for a rant!
Ted


On Mar 14, 2014, at 1:44 PM, Steve Hankin <steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov<mailto:steven.c.hankin at noaa.gov>> wrote:

Hi All,

I'm joining into this discussion from the wings.  The topic here -- the
common tendency for the ACDD geo-spacio-temporal bounds attributes to get
corrupted -- has been beaten around a number of times among different
groups.  At this point it isn't clear that there is a "clean" resolution to
the problem;  there are already so many files out there that contain these
attributes that there may be no easy way to unwind the problem.  Might the
best path forward be to see about adding some words of caution into the the
documents that suggest the use of these attributes?  Something along these
lines:

Caution:   The encoding of geo-spatial bounds values as global attributes is
a practice that should be used with caution or avoided.

The encoding of geo-spatial bounds values as global attributes introduces a
high likelihood of corruption, because the attibute values duplicate
information already contained in the self-describing coordinates of the
dataset.   A number of data management operations that are common with
netCDF files will invalidate the values stored as global attributes.  Such
operations include extending the coordinate range of a netCDF file along its
record axis;  aggregating a collection of netCDF files into a larger
datasets (for example aggregating model outputs along their time axes); or
appending files using file-based utilities (e.g. nco).

It is recommended that 1) the use of these global attributes be restricted
to files whose contents are known to be completely stable -- i.e. files very
unlikely to be aggregated into larger collections;  and 2) as a matter of
best practice, software reading CF files should ignore these global
attributes; instead it should compute the geo-spatial bounds by scanning the
coordinate ranges found within the CF dataset, itself.

Comments?

   - Steve



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-ed

Ed Armstrong
JPL Physical Oceanography DAAC
818 519-7607




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Ed Armstrong
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