McIDAS Learning Guide
Version 2006
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The terms below are used throughout this chapter. Remember, because a workstation can store and display data, it can act as both a server and a client.
| Term | Definition |
| Alias | a short, user-defined name representing an ADDE dataset name; for example, the alias GV1 might represent the dataset name SSEC-RT/GOES8-1KVIS |
| Client | workstation receiving and displaying data |
| Dataset | collection of one or more files with a common format; for example, one dataset may consist of areas 101 to 104, another dataset may consist of MD files 1 to 10 |
| Dataset Name | name used by ADDE to reference a dataset; the dataset name consists of a group name and a descriptor name separated by a slash ( / ); for example, SSEC-RT/GOES8-1KVIS |
| Descriptor | name used to reference a dataset; for example, a dataset of areas 105 to 108 containing GOES-7 visible data at 4 km resolution might have the descriptor G7-VIS-4K |
| File Number | number used to reference a McIDAS format file (the standard McIDAS numbering scheme) |
| Format | file format; McIDAS formats include area, grid and MD; non-McIDAS formats include HDF and netCDF |
| Group | name used to reference a collection of descriptors; used by the client to determine which server should receive data requests |
| Position | absolute or time-relative position of a file in a dataset; position numbers greater than zero represent an absolute position in the dataset; position numbers less than or equal to zero represent a relative position, 0 is the most recent and -1 is the next most recent; for example, if a dataset has four images with times 13 UTC, 14 UTC, 15 UTC and 12 UTC, they have the positions -2, -1, 0 and -3 |
| Server | machine storing and supplying data |
| Type | data type: image, grid, point, navigation, or text |
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