DODS Quick Start Guide -- 2.3 Web Interface

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2.3 Web Interface

This is a little bit sneaky. Many sites that serve one DODS dataset serve several others as well. The DODS web interface (if it's enabled by the site) allows you to check the directory structure for other datasets. For example, let's look at the Reynolds data we saw in chapter 1:

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nph-nc/Datasets/reynolds_sst/sst.mnmean.nc.html

If we use the same URL, but without the file at the end, we can browse the directory of data:

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nph-nc/Datasets/reynolds_sst/

The DODS server checks to see whether the URL is a directory, and if so, it generates a directory listing, like this:

Web Interface Index Listing

You can see from the directory listing that the monthly mean dataset we've been looking at is accompanied by a weekly mean set, and a daily set. You can click on those datasets for more information about them, and proceed to examine and use them just as we've done with the other examples in chapter 1.

NOTE: This list is produced by a DODS server. It only really understands DODS data files. If the directory you're looking at has other files in it, clicking on them will probably produce an error.

Tom Sgouros, 2004/07/07