STFC Science Testbed - Advanced Digital Preservation - page 348

19.5.1 STFC1: Simple Scenario MST

A user from a future designated user community should be able to extract the
following information from the data for a given altitude and time
• Horizontal wind speed and direction

• Wind sheer

• Signal Velocity

• Signal Power

•

Aspect

•

Correlated Spectral Width

MST1.1

An example of data set specific plotting and analysis programs for the MST would
be the MST GNU plot software. This software plots Cartesian product of wind pro-
files from NetCDF data files. This software was developed by the project scientist
due to specialised visualization requirements where finer definition of colour and
font was needed than that provided by generic tools. Preservation risks are due to
the following user skill requirements and technical dependencies.

- UNIX http://www.unix.org/ or Linux distribution
- The user must be able to install python http://www.python.org/ with python-dev
module installed with numpy array package and pycdf
- GNU plot to be installed http://www.gnuplot.info/docs/gnuplot.html and a user
must be able to set environmental variables
- The ability to run required python scripts through a UNIX command line
- GNU plot template file to format plot output.

A number of preservation strategies presented themselves

Emulation Strategy

One solution is preserving the software through emulation, for example Dioscuri
http://dioscuri.sourceforge.net/faq.html . Current work with the PLANETS project
http://www.planets-project.eu/news/?id=1190708180 will make Dioscuri capable
of running operating systems such as Linux Ubuntu which should satisfy plat-
form dependencies. With the capture of specified software packages/libraries and
the provision of all necessary user instructions this would become a viable strategy.

Conversion Strategy

It is additionally possible to convert NetCDF files to another compatible format
such as NASA AMES http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/help/formats/NASA-Ames/ .Wewere
able to achieve this conversion using the community developed software Nappy