[GRASS5] Proposal for a GRASS daemon to deliver metadata

[Roger Bivand]

Justin:

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Justin Hickey wrote:

> Markus Neteler wrote:
> > we have been talking about the GRASS environmental variables,
> > if and how to include a GRASS_TEMP variable etc. From
> > sitting here with Roger Bivand at Chatham campus, we got the
> > idea that a GRASS daemon might be great to solve a couple
> > of problems.
> 
> Interesting idea but I don't know much about daemons except that they
> are processes that sit there and provide a service to other processes.
> Could you please elaborate on what you expect the daemon to do with
> respect to the kinds of services it will provide?
> 
The reason for the question is that when GRASS data are used by GRASS
programs in the GRASS environment, they are associated with
"their" metadata (location, region etc.) through environmental
variables. When the data are interfaced to R or indeed PostgreSQL, it
isn't too clear how to maintain consistency between the data and their
initial metadata, which ought to matter in general, and does matter when
they move back into the environment used by GRASS programs. In the first
R/GRASS interface version, all the data moved were tagged with their
metadata, but this led to lots of duplication. The fact that the same
question appears to affect PostgreSQL made us feel that it is a general
one, calling for consideration of how to keep the metadata and the data
consistent.

How this makes our concern clearer!

Roger


-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
and: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of
Gdansk, al. Mar. J. Pilsudskiego 46, PL-81 378 Gdynia, Poland.


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