[Nexus] NeXus - a solution to what is not the real problem ?

[Gerd Wellenreuther]

Hi Joachim,

Wuttke, Joachim schrieb:
> What I am attacking is not the
> serious work you are doing for really complicated data set, but the idea, popular
> at management level, that NeXus should ultimately be used at _all_ neutron and
> X-ray instruments. All I want to say is: for certain types of instruments, migrating
> to NeXus would be considerable effort, would rather increase than reduce the
> diversity of data formats, would not improve the messy state of software seen by
> the users.
There are lot of issues which can be tackled by the use of a common data 
format, not only simple data exchange, but also software developement, 
data archiving etc.. For this reason, the aim to define and spread the 
use of such a common data format is good, IMHO. But when it comes to 
*implementing* this dataformat at individual beamlines / instruments, 
the corresponding work should *not* be done by single beamline 
scientists, or even single institutes - this would again result in 
different flavours of what was supposed to be the common data format (as 
can be seen by the struggle of facilities like Soleil and Diamond, both 
writing NeXus-files but not being able to use the software(s) developed 
at the other side of the channel). So, if we do it right, the single 
beamline scientist should not be required to bear the biggest part of 
the workload - the opposite should be the case. In the long run, we want 
to save time, right?

So the goal has to be to define a common data format *ALONG* with a 
high-level API (much higher than the present NeXus-API in my opinion) 
which assists IT-guys and scientists from different facilities to 
exploit the capabilities of NeXus, *AND* further tools for the 
scientists to do their job. Of course, if the management thinks this is 
a good idea, they have to fund people to implement it :).

Sure, NeXus is not the perfect candidate for such a common data format. 
Fact is also: There is no other candidate. (At this point you might 
notice: I am not considering starting from scratch as an option :) .)

Cheers, Gerd