[CF-metadata] Conventions (vs. Community Profiles), and CF-checker

[Nan Galbraith]

Russ Rew wrote:
> Another possibility to consider is the notation
>
>   :Conventions = "A/B" ;
>   
Aha, and thanks - I thought the recommended separator was a
comma - my mistake.

The question still remains whether CF might allow this, or if the
Conventions attribute must be a simple 'CF-2.4' to be compliant.

There is a certain benefit to putting all the conventions into one 
attribute,
but I don't suppose this outweighs any potential for broken code.  The
selection of a standard attribute name for community profiles seems like
a good second choice, with no down side for anyone. Of course we would
want it to be an optional attribute, since it would not apply to many 
NetCDF
files.

Convention_profile would be nice from a parsing/programing point of
view,  or Community_profile, for better human readability.

Thanks -
Nan




>>    1. It would be best not to "break" the CF conventions, so retaining
>>       simply the unadorned Conventions = "CF-1.4" seems the best choice.
>>    2. You can pick any non-reserved attribute name that you want to
>>       enable the OceanSites-specific software to detect the additional
>>       conventions.  There is a danger of future attribute name
>>       collisions, and your specific community's software, alone, (I
>>       assume?) has an interest in this attribute.  So I'd suggest that
>>       the attribute name you pick is quite specific to your needs.  e.g.
>>           *  OceanSitesConventionsVersion = 1.0;
>>
>> ====
>> For the larger CF community we should consider whether there is value in 
>> having a general sub-conventions attribute of the style that Derrick 
>> proposed.  His proposal was
>>
>>     .Profile = "XBT-1.0" or .Community_Profile or whatever?
>>
>> If the growth of CF continues as we expect, then these issues are going 
>> to be arising more often.  In the end the extended family of CF datasets 
>> will be cleaner and more intelligible if there is an identified 
>> attribute that can be examined to identify what sub-conventions 
>> (profile) were followed.  To make such an attribute mandatory would 
>> break a lot of existing files.  But the attribute does seem worthy to be 
>> stated as a "recommended attribute" in CF documentation.
>>
>> Should we open a trac ticket?
>>
>>     - Steve
>>
>>     


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