Proposal: ebXML RegRep Profile for NetCDF Data

[Farrukh Najmi <farrukh@wellfleetsoftware.com>]

Dear Colleagues,

Reagan and I have been collaborating on supporting the use of ebXML RegRep as a catalog of scientific datasets stored in NetCDF format files.

NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a set of machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array, tabular or grid-oriented scientific data. NetCDF formats are commonly used in the scientific research communities for storing scientific data sets. It has been formally adopted and endorsed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). It is widely used in NASA, NOAA, NCAR, USGS and many other organizations worldwide.

Several communities already maintain a catalog of their NetCDF data using a variety of solutions. The data.gov site provides a global catalog of NetCDF resources across various communities. NASA's Global Change Master Directory has a catalog of distributed NetCDF data. George Mason University's GeoBrains is another catalog of distributed NetCDF data.

The following document defines a drfat specification for an extension profile of ebXML RegRep that allows an ebXML RegRep server to be used a federated catalog of NetCDF resources and support the discovery and use of NetCDF resources anywhere on the web:

https://wiki.oasis-open.org/regrep/documents/plan/regrep4/NetCDFProfile

You will see close similarities between this specification and several other recent extension profile specifications. They all define a CQL Context Set and use CQL queries to query for their respective resources. This simplifies the profile by not requiring parameterized queries to be defined by the profile.

Please share any comments on this draft specification.

Thank you.

-- 
Regards,
Farrukh Najmi and Dr. Reagan Moore