[fdo-internals] Re: FDO raster image data model does not provide the actual number of bits used by certain image data formats (Re: FdoRfc1 & FdoRfc2)

[Frank Warmerdam]

Greg Boone wrote:
> (NOTE: I am now adding the ‘FDO Internals’ email list to the thread)
>
> A couple of additional points,
> 
> 1) Regarding the ‘bool force’ option on the proposed GetMinMax() 
> function. I am not really in favor of offering this option, thus 
> requiring the FDO Provider to scan the image to determine the min/max 
> values. This is especially true when interfacing with the 
> FdoRasterDataModel Interface, which is meant for informational purposes 
> only. If the underlying raster libraries do not offer the min/max values 
> then I would rather leave their brute force calculation up to the caller 
> rather than providing this logic in the provider.

Greg,

I must admit I have qualms about putting an action, like computing min/max
on the FdoRasterDataModel interface which seems to be very property
oriented.  On the other hand, it isn't obvious where else to put an
operation like this.  Advice welcome.

I think there are benefits to letting the provider compute the min/max
values.  Both with regard to performance and since this gives the provider
the opportunity to record the statistics in the dataset, as GDAL does.

I mentioned performance in particular because FDO provides no concept
of what the natural block size of an image is, nor what overviews are
available.  So it is very hard for FDO applications to efficiently and
generally sample an image on natural blocks, and/or utilize available
overview levels to quickly sample an image.

> 2) I would like to point out that not all of the raster libraries that 
> our providers deal with offer up the min/max values. For example the 
> ATIL library only offers access to the bits and bitsUsed per pixel.

For images such as NITF formats with a corresponding ABPP flag, this
should be enough to return a useful approximate min/max value.

However, I don't think we should be hobbling the FDO data model due
to an incomplete feature set in ATIL.  And this would hopefully give
the ATIL folks some encouragement to consider a more robust model for
image scaling information.

> 3) If I read correctly, your proposal to add the GetMinMax function 
> would mean that GetBitsPerPixel and GetBitsUsedPerPixel will not be 
> supported.  Following up on Sarat’s comments, what was your opinion on 
> providing both sets of API functions? I think this may prove to be more 
> flexible when implementing different raster providers such as the 
> Autodesk Raster provider and the GDAL Raster provider.

We definately need GetBitsPerPixel().  But you are correct that I am
proposing RFC2 as an alternative to adding the GetBitsUsedPerPixel()
which I find to be very specialized and of limited actual value to
applications.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org