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scienceDataInterfaces

Jeremy Faden edited this page Jun 14, 2024 · 3 revisions

Purpose: Serve as a place for notes about the science data interace developed with Jon V. and others at APL.

Audience: Jon V and others at APL, Jeremy

The Task

Provide a simplified dataset interface that is strongly typed and easier to use than QDataSet. QDataSet is intentionally weakly typed, so that it can be translated to many environments. This has made it difficult to use.

Names for things

Physical Dimensions

Number of physical dimensions. The arrows (→) should be read "yields." Lower case i,j,and k refer to an indices.

# of Dimensions SDI QDataSet
2 X(i)→Y(i) XYData,BinnedData1D Rank 1 DataSet with DEPEND_0
3 X(i),Y(j)→Z(i,j) BinnedData2D Rank 2 DataSet with DEPEND_0 and DEPEND_1
3 X(i),Y(i)→Z(i) XYZData Rank 2 DataSet with BUNDLE_1=[X,Y,Z]
4 T(i)→X(i),Y(i),Z(i) Rank 2 DataSet with BUNDLE_1=[T,X,Y,Z] X has property DEPENDNAME_0=T, etc.
4 Time(i),Energy(j),PitchAngle(k)→Flux(i,j,k) Rank 3 DataSet with DEPEND_0=Time, DEPEND_1=Energy, DEPEND_2=PitchAngle

Contiguous Coverage

Is the dimension coverage contiguous? We can define interfaces that assert the contiguous coverage by only allowing access to the lower boundary and the highest bin boundary.

Simple and Rich Datasets

We break up data into two classes, not having metadata (SimpleXXX) and having metadata (XXX). In addition to having metadata, rich datasets provide a FillDetector and UncertaintyProvider.

Glossary

Here is a pile of commonly used words.

Cadence The expected spacing between measurements. QDataSet.CADENCE is this value, and is a rank 0 dataset, but rank 1 may be allowed a future version.

Aliasing Interval accumulation time for the measurement, meaning the measurement should be applied with equal probability during this time.

Duration Another word for Aliasing Interval

Units define a physical dimension. E.g. "seconds since 2000-01-01T00:00" or "Kg"

Datum defines a point within a physical dimension. E.g. "2015-03-15T14:45" or "95.2 Kg"

Basis Special point within a physical dimension that is 0. For example in "seconds since 2000-01-01T00:00" the basis is "2000-01-01T00:00"

DatumRange defines an interval within a physical dimension. Used throughout Das2 and Autoplot.

Bin defines an interval within a physical dimension, but also contains a reference Datum.

Rank QDataSet term for the number of integers needed to index a value in a dataset.

Dimensionality The number of physical dimensions a dataset occupies.

Table Of Contents

URIs that Point to Data Files

Download a CDF and Plot it with Autoplot

Load a CDF directly from a website

URIs that Point to Data Servers

Saving to vap files

Loading vap files

Data Sources

CDF Files

HDF/NetCDF Files

Aggregation

CDAWeb

HAPI Servers

Exporting Data

Export Types

Additional controls

Aggregation

Tools

PNGWalk Tool

Data Mash Up

Events List

Run Batch

Advanced Topics

TimeSeriesBrowse and other Capabilities

Events Lists

Caching

Autoranging

Managing Autoplot's Data Cache

Using Autoplot with Python, IDL, and Matlab

Reading data into Python

Reading data into IDL

Reading data into Matlab

QDataSet Data Model

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