ABSTRACT

Some Attributes of the Data Management System, Release 1.5
Bob Groman

The U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program uses the JGOFS software to serve our diverse data sets via the World Wide Web. This is the same software used by the U.S. JGOFS Program to serve their data. Chris Hammond, my counterpart at the JGOFS program; Glenn Flierl, one of the original developers of the JGOFS software; Warren Sass, a programmer at WHOI; and myself have been working on enhancements to the JGOFS software. The results of these efforts will soon be available in the form of a new release, Version 1.5, of the JGOFS software.

The enhancements made in Version 1.5 include:

a new look to the directory of data objects, including a Help button, listing of the objects before the directory structure, and a pointer to where you are in the directory
the ability for data and field names to "line up" when displayed on your browser. This "width sensitive" feature is available in all standard methods (def, nm, and lm). To take advantage of this feature, the field attribute [width=nn] can be added to the field names within your objects, where nn is the maximum size of the data field length. For exanple, the field name cast can be extended to a field width of 6 by using cast[width=6] when specifying the field name in the data file.
improved error message reporting
ability for URL's (i.e. clickable links) to appear within the data comments

Several programming bugs are also being addressed in this new release, including better sensing of non-numerical data within a data value and improved handling of data buffers to minimize the risk of "buffer overflows."

While everyone who browses and accesses the data will see the changes in the look of the directory, it is only those sites who are serving data that need to "do anything" about this release. All your existing methods will continue to work with this new release, but before you recompile any of your methods with the new software, you need to make some changes to your code. Contact the Data Management Office (DMO) for instructions and help when you are ready to recompile and relink your own methods.

A few data serving sites that take advantage of the "info" feature, will need to convert the contents of their descript.html files into .info files, one for each object name. Contact the DMO for more details.

We have already begun the planning on release 2.0 of the JGOFS software. In addition to futher improvements in the methods, we also plan to enhance the data analysis, display and searching functionality, based on your feedback and suggestions.

Some Attributes of the Data Management System, Release 1.5 Bob Groman

Some Attributes of the Data Management System, Release 1.5
Bob Groman