temporal coverage tags, alternativeTimeScale

[Margaret O'Brien]

Hi -
I'd like someone to clear up some confusion about the temporal coverage 
module, specifically, the alternativeTimeScale.  This has an inpact on a 
recommendation which will be made by the lter EML best practices group.
Since sites conduct time series, many data sets can be considered 
'ongoing' ie, their data tables will be appended at some interval - 
perhaps regularly, but not necessarily.

In the introduction to the module documentation for eml-coverage, you state:
" In order to express an "ongoing" time frame, the end date in the range 
would likely use the alternate time scale fields with a value of 
"ongoing", whereas the begin date would use the specific calendar date 
fields. "

Should we extend this statement to mean that for our time-series 
datasets, an eml creator can populate the <timeScaleName> tag with a 
value of "ongoing" and a <timeScaleAgeEstimate> tag with a description 
of the update frequency for the data?

When we investigate the element defintions later in the document, it 
seems that these tags are intended for stratigraphic data and geologic 
time scales, which makes them inappropriate for an ongoing time series 
dataset.

Can you clarify 1) how you intended the alternativeTimeScale tree to be 
used, and 2) how you recommend we alert a reader that a dataset is a 
time series and will most definitely be updated.
Thanks-
Margaret O'Brien
-- 


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Margaret O'Brien
SBC-LTER Data Management
Marine Science Institute
UCSB
Santa Barbara, CA  93106

805-893-2071
mob at icess.ucsb.edu
http://sbc.lternet.edu
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