An XML-based Language to connect NetCDF and Geographic Communities

Geosciences and Geographic -information realms present several common aspects and share common data (i.e. they both generate, manage and use geospatial data). Nevertheless, they have been developing their own semantics, schemas and tools, which very often are not completely interoperable. That is the case of ncML (netCDF Markup Language) and GML (Geography Markup Language) content/semantics. Such issue is one of the main motivations for developing the presented neML extension called ncML-GML. NcML-GML leverages the ncML ability to encode multidimensional arrays, and the wide. acceptance of GML for encoding geospatial coverage. Based on GML 3.1.1 grammar, ncML,GML implements one of the possible encodings of a general interoperability model (i.e. both abstract and content interoperability models) which reconciles typical atmospheric sciences and geospatial data models. In this paper we describe the recently released version: ncML-GML ver. 0.7.3. The motivation, objectives and the newly-developed schemas are described and discussed. We also present the API (called N2G) developed to support ncML-GML documents as being used in the framework of GALEON IE - an OGC interoperability experiment which aims at extending the OGC WCS specification in order to support netCDF datasets. The role played by the ncML- GML in this experiment is presented and discussed.