OC Library Features and Analysis

Questions

Is it OK to reformat the code?

Features

Features likely needed by any general C-language client-side API for DAP

features already implemented in oc

1. get variables (primitive types)
2. get array varaibles (of primitive types)
3. get attributes

features that can be implemented with little effort

little means using the current library's structure and some more code

1. make print representations for all responses (DAS, DDS, DataDDS)
2. http authentication support
3. SSL suport
4. cookie support
5. .dodsrc support (read and write)
6. compression support
7. testing - write automated tests
8. nightly builds
9. automated build (autoconf, make, libtool)
10. more typical API (open, read, close all based on an opaque parameter - object - and C's existing data types)

features that will be hard to implement

hard means extending the existing library's structure/implementation

1. get structures (flat and nested)
2. get sequences (flat and nested)
3. get grids
4. get arrays of constructor types
5. parse XML(DDX, DataDDX*)
6. shared dimensions*
7. groups*
8. allow constraints for the DDS
9. allow constraints for the DataDDS (e.g., lat or lon or lat and lon togther)
10. DAP 3.x protocol version negotiation