15 December 2005

Present: Beth Ebert, Rod Potts, Sandy Dance, David Scurrah

Goals of meeting on XML format for TIFS / TITAN / B08FDP

1. See to what extent existing WDSS XML files meet our needs (Sandy, can you
bring a print out or two of WDSS files with cell data?). There currently
seems to be no schema for these files so we will need to create one at some
point but not tomorrow. Work done by Rod and David and Mey so far with TITAN
XML will be relevant here.
   Can we find out from WDSS developers what state of development their XML
output is at - is their file format set in stone or can they be flexible to
suggested changes if we have any.

2. To decide what should be the next steps for us to develop XML for our own
needs (TIFS, TITAN, B08FDP, other?). Ideally I would like to get a draft
version of XML schema(s) ready sometime next month to circulate among B08FDP
participants and other nowcast developers (Senesi, NSSL) for comment. This
will mean defining what the various cell attributes should be and what they
should be called, etc. Hopefully the WDSS XML files will already contain
much of this information.


Notes and actions (red)

Rod and Mey have put together a draft XML format for TITAN. Click here to see
the schema, click here to see an example of a TITAN XML file.

Sandy showed some examples of WDSS XML files from the BOM implementation.
The WDSS schema does not organize data by cell, as we would intuitively like,
so if we use WDSS we'll want to translate the files into an XML format that is
more like what we want. WDSS uses 3 XML files for forecasts - "cell", "meso",
"tds", which are not explicitly linked.

Robert Dahni (BOM Data Management Group) is part of a working group to
consider use of XML in the Bureau. We need to interface with them. Sandy will
talk with Mal Gorman (CCSB).

The Rapidly Developing Thunderstorm (RDT) project that Stephane Senesi's group
is working on has nice data definitions that we may wish to borrow or imitate. Beth
to ask Stephane and Paul Joe for a list of BUFR products used by their systems,
with a view to compiling a list for use in the Bureau and B08FDP.

David says it makes more sense to use several small schemas that are more modular,
rather than one very large one. Schemas can use other schemas. David will work on
some primitives.