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Design goals and rationale

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Jonathan Yu edited this page Jan 18, 2017 · 10 revisions

In its most basic form netCDF–LD is a method of parsing the contents of any netCDF file to produce a set of RDF triples describing the relationships between the file, its components (groups, variables, and attributes) and the values of the attributes. It makes use of the Binary Array Linked Data (BALD) ontology to express hierarchical file, group, and variable relationships. Attribute names and values are expressed as predicate-object pairs, each having its containing file, group, or variable as its subject.

NetCDF-LD also specifies a syntax for declaring and using prefixes and aliases within a netCDF file (See Aliasing and Prefixes). Prefixes and aliases allow the author of a netCDF file to keep the attributes names and values within the file concise and readable yet produce full URIs in RDF triples parsed from it.

Principles

NetCDF-LD:

  1. Will follow Linked Data principles.
  2. Shall be 100% compatible with netCDF-4.
  3. Shall have a simple and minimal syntax.
  4. Shall be expressed within netCDF files in such a way that the information is understandable without knowledge of Linked Data or RDF.
  5. Shall be general purpose and agnostic to conventions.

Design Goals

  • Simplicity: no extra libraries needed to use netCDF-LD in its simplest and most basic form.
  • Compatibility: netCDF-LD will always be compatible with netCDF
  • Terse: netCDF-LD syntax will be concise and human-readable where possible
  • Equivalence as RDF: netCDF-LD elements usable as netCDF without knowing RDF, but also netCDF-LD usable as RDF. This allows a means to reference external resources and further join up with other RDF graphs and descriptions as Linked Data.

Rationale

netCDF-LD borrows and adopts *-LD patterns already established for extending existing formats (e.g. [JSON-LD] (http://json-ld.org/) and CSV-for-the-web formats). By aligning with these patterns and adopting Linked Data principles, netCDF-LD applications can:

  • Take advantage of existing software for processing Linked Data
  • Support more effective data discovery and integration across systems
  • Provides opportunities for reuse of netCDF data more widely

netCDF-LD also aims to enable consistency checking and validation against known conventions such as [CF conventions] (http://cfconventions.org/) and ACDD, particularly ensuring syntactic and controlled vocabulary checking.

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