Present included: Trond Michelsen, Joseph Matula, Adrian Custer, Marie-Françoise Voidrot, Frédéric Guillaud,

In the OGC Met Ocean DWG Teleconference on 18 January 2010, the main ideas were that:

Trond stresses the point that his proposal to handle dependent dimensions by defining a new WMS operation is fully compatible with WMS1.3 as the standard offers this possibility.

We then explained to Adrian the problem we want to solve : The model data are a non complete hypercube of data with some dependent dimensions :

• some parameters are only available at certain levels (typically at the SURFACE or GROUND level) but also for instance for turbulence or icing risk , it is calculated only at relevant levels
• the maximum offset of the forecasted data can depend on the run (typically at 00UTC or 12UTC the forecasts are often longer that at 6UTC or 18 UTC)
• the step between two offsets can depend on the offset ( the offset can be 3 hours for instance for several days and then 6 hours later on)

Adrian suggests that we are dealing with too much complexity of the data when most of the users only need much more simple data (for instance a forecast of temperature for tuesday). He suggests to make two profiles : one for simple use cases for mass market and one to cover all use cases. (General public profile and professional profile)

The aim until now is to make one single profile where the good defaults will be set to answer simple requests in an intuitive way. This also implies to define DIMENSIONS as compulsory only when really needed.

Are levels needed for the general public needs ? : yes for aeronautics.

Adrian states that we have to clarify our goal and problems before eventually ask for some recommendations to other SWG group as : is it more suitable to use WFS or CWS to make the link between several services.

It was interesting to have a "fresh view" and we'll have to describe clearly our specificities to better cooperate with others groups.

Stephan Siemen suggested that the next teleconf could be on Interoperability experiment. Then the next one on WMS profile would be in 2 weeks.

-- MarieFrancoiseVoidrotMartinez - 20 Jan 2010