In the application I am working on, there are specific types of products where
where the same quality flags apply to multiple variables. These products will
be contained in a single NetCDF file.
The current CF conventions dictate that quality flags are attached to specific
variables. The implication is that comforming with CF conventions would
require the same quality flags to be stored multiple times in our NetCDF
product files. This is potentially problematic due to the resulting increase
in product file size. Our variables have on the order of 10s of millions of
data points where each has a distinct quality flag.
This issue has come up before, and any design to optimize flags has been
dismissed due to the overriding objective of having variables that are
self-describing.
Product file compression is a potential answer, but this presents its own set
of performance issues.
Maybe flags could be handled in a similar manner as coordinates to allow
sharing among variables ?
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