JGOFS Software Release 1.5

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 for many months. The results of these efforts are 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 value, in bytes.
Alternatively, the width of each column can be extended by adding an appropriate number of underscores to the field names. These are stripped off by the software, after they are counted to determine the field width attribute. For example:
```
		field name:  cast
		can be extended to a field width of 6 by either 
			of the following:
		   cast__
		   cast[width=6]
	
```
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 to data buffers to minimize the risk of "buffer overflows."

While everyone who browses and accesses the data will see the improvements in the look of the directory, it is only those sites who are serving data that need to "do anything" about this release. You can access the new software at the install software page at URL

http://lake.mit.edu/~glenn/jg/install-1-5.html

and follow the instructions on this page. You should know that all of your existing methods will continue to work as is 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 local "info" feature, will also need to run a utility to convert the contents of their descript.html files into .info files, one for each object name. If you need this script, please contact the DMO.

We plan to prepare new releases of the JGOFS software, approximately every four months. In addition to futher improvements in the methods, we also plan to enhance the data analysis and display functionality in upcoming releases, based on your feedback and suggestions and available funding.

So, if you use data served by the JGOFS software you should see several improvements on how it looks and performs. If you serve data to others via this software, you need to get the new software release and install it on your system. As always, I am available to help you with the installation process. Please contact me when you are ready to install the new software.

Prepared by: Bob Groman
Last modified: December 16, 1997