[Platforms] Meteor

[Roy Lowry]

Hi Marilynn,

That is correct for Meteor.  Friedrich has not said anything about RV/FS.  I will see him next week and ask him.

Hi Michele,

Other forces are pressing us to use ship titles (e.g. POGO) as it is the only way to prevent some chaotic confusions.  For example, in the UK we have FV Challenger (a fishing boat), RRS Challenger (ex-research vessel), CP Challenger (container ship) and HMS Challenger (navy survey ship).  

In the short term I am fixing this by adding titles (and some other things) in the name field, but I agree that it's not the best way. 'Adding another field to the table' is not possible as it would involve a major change to the Vocabulary Server data model - which is the same for ship codes, parameter codes etc., etc. - and I simply do not have the time to do this.

However, I am working together with ICES towards an interoperable solution for the longer term based upon structured definitions - essentially XML fragments - that carry information like title, callsign, dates of service, previous names and so on.  Once this is fully populated (no small task), the Web Services will be extended to dynamically build various forms of name.

We are building controlled vocabularies here, so we control the syntax.  Consequently, there will only be RV and no R-V or R/V - getting rid of such variations (and problems such as bad spellings of names) is the whole idea!

Cheers, Roy.

>>> Michele FICHAUT <Michele.Fichaut at ifremer.fr> 03/16/07 7:56 AM >>>