NeXus workshop

[Ray Osborn]

on 2000/06/27 4:44 AM, Mark Koennecke at Mark.Koennecke at psi.ch wrote:

> do we really need two workshops? Would enough people from America come
> to europe to discuss such matters? Concerning SNS: can they not be
> contended with the message that there will be a migration towards HDF5
> within the next year?
> 

The issue isn't whether we are going to migrate to HDF5.  I think SNS are
already satisfied with the statements we've made, and the discussions you
had with Tom at NOBUGS.  The main reason for wanting two workshops is the
timing.  

There are a number of technical issues concerning how we start the migration
to HDF5 + a number of other useful things to discuss such as Java support.
The SNS wants to get going on both these issues soon - they might have some
programming support next year.  Also, I know that you have money for a
post-doc.  I think it would be useful for us to have a round-table
discussion before that post-doc gets too far.  The transition to HDF5 is not
just a rewrite of the HDF4 API because they handle some things differently,
e.g. linking is done with absolute path names, not tag/ref pairs, there is
no internal support for classes or global attributes.  We still have not
resolved the issue of defining axes, or giving programmers high-level tools
to extract plottable data.

These are all suitable subjects for just a few of us to grapple with, rather
than involving the whole community.  However, we do need to involve
scientists in refining the instrument definitions, which are still the
weakest part of the project.  That will take time to organize - more like
several months than several weeks, because I want to set up working groups
in advance.

I repeat that I envisage the first as just an informal meeting of the NAPI
team, the second as the first formal attempt to involve the whole neutron
and x-ray community.  Let me know why you are not keen on two workshops.  Is
it just the time they take up, or is funding an issue?  Concerning people
coming from the US to Europe, we are going to seek funding support from the
SNS so I hope that will not be such a big issue.  In any case, there are
more functioning neutron sources in Europe at the moment  (I don't know
about x-rays). 

Regards,
Ray
-- 
Dr Ray Osborn                Tel: +1 (630) 252-9011
Materials Science Division   Fax: +1 (630) 252-7777
Argonne National Laboratory  E-mail: ROsborn at anl.gov
Argonne, IL 60439-4845