Hyrax-1.9 Release Announcement

[Nathan Potter]

Greetings,

OPeNDAP is pleased to announce the release of the Hyrax-1.9 server.

This new version has several improvements over the 1.8 version including:
• New server functions including a new way to build arrays with constant values.
• Experimental support for POST with this server. This new feature provides a way to pass very large constraint expressions to the server.
• Hyrax now supports the server function calling syntax used by the GDS and FTDS servers.
• We have modified the constraint expression syntax in three important ways: It's possible to use a * for the end count in an array subset operation, so you can say x[10:2:*] to get every second element from 10 to the end of the dimension; The server supports multiple function calls separated by commas in a single expression; and the server will return metadata responses for server function calls. This means server functions will work with clients built using the netCDF C and Java libraries.
• The server includes a new handler that returns GeoTIFF files for variables with recognized geospatial metadata.

HDF4 and HDF5
• Enhanced support for the CF conventions. While many HDF4 and HDF5 files from NASA and other Government agencies contain the information covered by the CF convention, they often do not express it in a conformant way. The HDF handlers have expanded support for CF with this latest version of Hyrax. Thanks to The HDF Group for their work on this software!

NetCDF
• The netcdf handler reads version 4 files now and the file response handler that builds netCDF files will make a netCDF 4 file if asked (append .dap.nc4 to the URL if you're using a client where you build URLs yourself). The HTML form interface has a button for NetCDF4 now, too.
GDAL
• Hyrax now includes handlers that read and return files using the GDAL library. Any file type that GDAL can read can be served. For file return types Hyrax 1.9 uses GDAL for GeoTIFF with experimental support for JPEG2000. These return types only work when the data are georeferenced.


Caveats
At the time of this announcement we know that the HDF4/5 handlers may not be able to produce correct XML output (DDX responses) for data files that contain large text (String valued) attributes with unusual characters. This is due to an internal escaping issue and will be corrected shortly.

Please find the new release here: http://www.opendap.org/download/hyrax/1.9



Thanks,

The OPeNDAP Development Team.

= = =
Nathan Potter ndp at opendap.org
OPeNDAP, Inc. +1.541.231.3317