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THREDDS
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Status Report: THREDDS

October 2017 - March 2018

Sean Arms, Ethan Davis, Dennis Heimbigner,  Ryan May, Christian Ward-Garrison

Areas for Committee Feedback

We are requesting your feedback on the following topics:

  1. If we were to upgrade thredds.ucar.edu to TDS 5 at the beginning of August, how would this impact your Fall 2018 classes? Would you have time to tests your course resources that utilize the server?

Activities Since the Last Status Report

The THREDDS Project

The THREDDS Project encompases four projects: netCDF-Java, the THREDDS Data Server (TDS), Rosetta, and Siphon (the Unidata Python client to interact with a TDS). For specific information on Siphon, please see the Python Status Report. An update regarding cloud efforts related to the TDS, including the popular Docker container effort, can be found in the Cloud Computing Activities Status Report.

Released netCDF-Java / TDS version 4.6.11 (Stable)

Progress has been made on the following:

Focus on netCDF-Java / TDS (Soon-to-be Beta) v5

We have hoped to have the beta out real soon now™ for quite some time, and are happy to say a beta is set to be released on March 16th. While there are known bugs in this beta, as well as both unknown and “unknown unknown” bugs, this represents a big step forward for the project. It is our intention that TDS v5 will be released by the end of summer.

Progress has been made on the following:

Dependencies, challenges, problems, and risks include:

Rosetta

Rosetta continues to progress thanks to support from a NASA ACCESS grant (the Oceanographic In-situ data Interoperability Project, or OIIP), in which Unidata is partnering with the PO.DAAC at JPL and UMASS-Boston. We are currently in our final 6 months of funding for the project.

Progress has been made on the following:

Dependencies, challenges, problems, and risks include:

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

The following active proposals directly involve THREDDS work:

New Activities

Over the next three months, we plan to organize or take part in the following:

Over the next twelve months, we plan to organize or take part in the following:

Beyond a one-year timeframe, we plan to organize or take part in the following:

Relevant Metrics

10,832 unique IPs started up thredds from November 2014 through March 2018, 160 of which are publicly accessible servers. Publically accessible is defined as the following URL patterns being accessible with an HTTP GET requests with a return status less than 400 as well as content that contains xml:

http(s)://<ip address>/thredds/catalog.xml

http(s)//<ip address>:8080(8443)/thredds/catalog.xml

You may notice that the number of publicly accessible TDSs decreased just over half since our last report (now at 160). This is due to a new check that, in addition to being resolvable, the server response is actually an xml file. Many of the of the previously counted “publicly accessible” TDSs that are now excluded are AWS 404 html pages (and in some case, not so “PG” ad pages).

This information is only known for servers running v4.5.3 and above. There are many reasons why these number are so different. The differences could be due to:

Note that the vast majority of the publicly accessible servers are running v4.6.3 or above (v4.6.11 was the most current release during this period, and was released on 11 December 2017, and is the most commonly run version of the 4.6.x line of the TDS ). This indicates that users and organizations running the TDS tend to follow along closely with the current releases of the TDS.

Note that there are some odd looking versions of the TDS being reported in the log files, such as TDS_4.28.x. It is likely these version numbers are actually generated by software that is being built on top of the TDS or applications that bundle the TDS as part of a deployment package (perhaps ESGF nodes?).

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

  1. Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data
    The work of the THREDDS group is comprised of two main areas: the THREDDS Data Server (TDS) and the Common Data Model (CDM) / netCDF-Java library. The TDS provides catalog and data access services for scientific data using OPeNDAP, OGC WCS and WMS, HTTP, and other remote data access protocols. The CDM provides data access through the netCDF-Java API to a variety of data formats (e.g., netCDF, HDF, GRIB). Layered above the basic data access, the CDM uses the metadata contained in datasets to provide a higher-level interface to geoscience specific features of datasets, in particular, providing geolocation and data subsetting in coordinate space. The CDM also provides the foundations for all the services made available through the TDS.

    The data available from the IDD is a driving force on both the TDS and netCDF-Java development. The ability to read all the IDD data through the netCDF-Java library allows the TDS to serve that data and provide services on/for that data.
  2. Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data
    Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) depends on the netCDF-Java library for access to local data, and on the THREDDS Data Server (TDS) for remote access to IDD data. At the same time, the CDM depends on the IDV to validate and test CDM software. Many other tools build on the CDM / netCDF-Java library (e.g. ERDDAP, Panoply, VERDI, etc) and on the TDS (ESGF, LAS, ncWMS, MyOcean, etc).
  3. Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use
    The Common Data Model (CDM) / netCDF-Java library is one of the few general-purpose implementations of the CF (Climate and Forecast) metadata standards. Current active efforts in CF that we are involved with include use of the extended netCDF-4 data model (CF 2.0) and for point data (Discrete Sampling Geometry CF-DSG).

    The TDS has pioneered the integration of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) protocols into the earth science communities. Strong international collaborations have resulted in WCS and WMS services as part of the TDS.

    The CDM and TDS are widely used implementations of the OPeNDAP DAP2 data access protocol. Unidata has worked with the OPeNDAP group to design, develop, and implement a new version of the DAP specification, DAP4, which is now available in the TDS server and the netCDF-Java client software stack.
  4. Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community
    The THREDDS project is involved in several international standardization efforts (CF, OGC, etc.) which cross-cut a multitude of disciplines, both inside and outside of the geoscience community. The netCDF-Java client library, as well as the TDS often serve as incubators for new pushes in these efforts.

Prepared  March 2018