Minutes of Standards Telecon - Wednesday, October 27
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Attendees
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Steven Adams (CN)
Tyler Brown (CN)
Patty Garcia (Imaging)
Valerie Henderson (CN)
Lyle Huber (Atmospheres)
Chris Isbell (Imaging)
Ron Joyner (CN)
Todd King (PPI)
Anne Raugh (SBN)
Elizabeth Rye (CN)
Mark Showalter (Rings)
Dick Simpson (RS)
Susie Slavney (Geo)
Betty Sword (CN)
David Tarico (SBN)
Joel Wilf (CN)

Discussion
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The PDS Standards Reference is currently being updated to Version 3.7. This
will include all the approved standards changes since the last version, along
with corrections for errors, omissions, and ambiguity. The corrections will be
rolled into a single SCR for approval before being incorporated.

The release of Version 3.7 is planned for the end of calendar year 2004. The
goal is to have all the approved standards applied and the "corrections SCR"
complete by November 30. The idea is to provide a month for PDS to review the
changes, adding, amending, or rolling back changes, if needed. In the
meantime, the Nodes were encouraged to send any errors they know about to Joel
by November 30.

Anne asked which version of the Standards would missions use for a specific
product. The answer was that missions could choose between staying with the
Standards version they started with or adopting the current version. The
recently approved DD_VERSION_ID enables accumulating data sets to be validated
against specific versions of the data dictionary.

Todd asked how standards are linked to the PDSDD. Then Lyle, Anne, and
Elizabeth all brought up that the catalog file examples in the standards don't
conform to the PDSDD. Joel acknowledged that this has been a long-standing
problem in the PDS and is committed to fixing it. The first step is to take
the Standards Reference at face value, as essentially a contract between PDS
and the data providers. From this, it follows that the Standards should be
made more rigorous and that the data dictionary and tools should be made
consistent with the Standards. As Todd noted, there should also be explicit
information on which version of the Standards is supported by a particular
version of the data dictionary. Version 3.7 of the Standards will provide
information on which data dictionary builds are appropriate.

Following that discussion, the Standards Queue was examined. The group seemed
supportive of the idea of introducing MD5 checksums for the purpose of
ensuring data integrity. Mark brought up the importance of determining where
the checksum can be obtained so that downloaded files can be checked against
it. Joel took the action to write the MD5SUM SCR.

Several other SCRs were discussed. Todd took the action to discuss the
PRODUCT_TYPE and INSTRUMENT_TYPE SCRs with Steve Joy. Someone at Imaging needs
to discuss the JPEG2000 standard with Erik Eliason.

FOLLOWUP: In correspondence with Todd, it was agreed that the changes to 
PRODUCT_TYPE were minor enough that the Project Engineer could move them to
the implementation queue and get them done right away. (This should be 
confirmed with the Tech Session next telecon). It was also agreed to keep 
the INSTRUMENT_TYPE SCR at the priority given.

The old issue of quoted underscores vs. blanks was discussed. Ron reviewed the
SCR approved in 2002, which said the standard values of a keyword should use
underscores if the keyword has a GENERAL_DATA_TYPE of IDENTIFIER and to use
blanks if the GENERAL_DATA_TYPE is CHARACTER. Elizabeth took the action to
check the current data dictionary and make sure it followed the rule
described.

Finally, the telecon time slot was discussed, since it runs back-to-back with
the MER DAWG. Susie indicated that this was not currently a problem; the MER
DAWG is currently held bi-weekly and may soon be held less often.
 
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