Quincey Koziol wrote:
Hi John,
We've got a question: is there a way to attach an attribute to a
member of a compound type dataset. That is, if I have a dataset of
something that is a compound type, can I attach at attribute not to
the whole dataset, but just to one member of the compound type?
Hmm, we've had a couple of requests for similar features, but you can't
do this currently. What's the motivation for this?
I think I will let John answer this part...
the motivation comes from creating a unifying model with the opendap
data model.
opendap structures contain "first class" variables that can have attributes.
Hmm, interesting...
however, if thats not feasible, i can do a workaround where opendap
structures become groups instead.
Well, it definitely isn't currently supported. Should I open an issue for
this in our tracker so we consider in the future? I'm just a bit concerned
about supporting the full generality of it, like attributes on parts of array
datatypes or nested compound datatypes, etc.
Quincey
yes, i think its worth considering in the future. this would make
structure members first class citizens. the attributes would apply to
the structure member as a whole, not individual array elements, just as
for an array dataset.
as i said, the motivation comes from opendap structures. ironically, i
suspect that it was at least in part motivated there by mapping hdf
(4/5?) into opendap, where they decided to map "groups" into
"structures". so we can just undo that and map opendap structures to
groups when needed.
