Is there any sort of "data dictionary" for WeatherCat?

[quanglewangle]

Is there any sort of "data dictionary" or spec for the many and various data items offered by WeatherCat's several output mechanisms ? Could someone point me in right place to look.

Something that collects together where all the various data items come from (e.g. direct from device head instruments, device base station memory, calculated by device base station, or calculated by WeatherCat), units for data, if calculated then basis of calculation where known.

Regards
Peter

[Randall75]

Hi Peter
 you can find all of that in the WeatherCat Users manual or on wiki pages of WeatherCat


cheers


 

[quanglewangle]

Thank you, Randall75 - yes I would have expected to be able to, but I can't. A link and/or page number would be welcome.

Regards

Peter

[elagache]

Hi Peter, Randall, and WeatherCat fans,

Is there any sort of "data dictionary" or spec for the many and various data items offered by WeatherCat's several output mechanisms ? Could someone point me in right place to look.

  . . . . . Hmm, could you make that question a little more vague? . . . 

Seriously, indeed WeatherCat has lots of data output mechanisms.  For example, there are web tags that you find described in Appendix 4 of the WeatherCat manual.  Another way to get at the WeatherCat data is through the AppleScript interface that is described in Appendix 1.  A third way to get at the data is through the various report mechanisms.  There is some information on these reports on page 113 of the current manual.

Yet another way is to access the data files themselves.  WeatherCat stores data by default in text files that you'll find in this folder (following the normal UNIX file system convention:)

~/Library/WeatherCatData

There isn't any documentation the file format that I can recall except that there is a header of comments at the top of each file that allows you to figure out what is going on.

Still another way to get access to all that data is to enable the SQL Driver.  Then all the data would be stored in an SQL database that you could assess using standard database queries.

However, I'll bet you are asking this question because you have some project you'd like to accomplish using data.  If it isn't a trade secret, giving us some idea of why you want the data for, that would really help us in giving you some suggestions on how to go about it.

  . . . . Of course, if you prefer . . . . you can always go about it . . . . da' hard way!!! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[quanglewangle]

Thanks, Edouard, for your thoughtful reply.  Actually no real project in mind, just playing with more charismatic ways of displaying the weather.  Got this far up to nowhttp://www.fimblefowl.co.uk/respWeather/ Its svg so YMMV! 

I already got my fingers burnt over the wind direction in the WeatherCat Log being derived from the an average (running, hourly, or what?) while the wind dir available on the CGI output coming from the device base station (and so being rounded to 45 degrees). My point is they are both headed Wind Dir but are semantically quite different. I was kindly helped out by WCDev of these parts, but I don't want ask each time!

If I go to the Live Data window there are about 30 rows of data with no units.  Precipitation total says 84: 84 what? and totaled since when? Cleared when?

All this amounts to needing a data dictionary [IBM Dictionary of Computing,  "centralized repository of information about data such as meaning, relationships to other data, origin, usage, and format.]

I guess there isn't one. Shame. I'll shut up now...

Regards
Peter

[elagache]

Hi Peter and WeatherCat Information Technology old-timers, . . .

Thanks, Edouard, for your thoughtful reply.

  . . . . . Thoughtful?  So I fooled you too!! . . . . 

All this amounts to needing a data dictionary [IBM Dictionary of Computing,  "centralized repository of information about data such as meaning, relationships to other data, origin, usage, and format.]

. . . . . You are looking for a what!?!?!?!? . . .

Why my good man, such dictionaries went extinct probably before the invention of Wi-Fi! 

Alas, there are more than a few people who lament its passing . . . myself included!!

If I go to the Live Data window there are about 30 rows of data with no units.  Precipitation total says 84: 84 what? and totaled since when? Cleared when?

Are you referring to the Live Data (formerly called the Live Data View) window?  This one I can answer for you - I think!  The units are the units consistent with your preferences for WeatherCat.  So if you are a Fahrenheit, mph, inches kind of guy, those will be the units corresponding to the data.  If you are an advanced metric kind of guy, it will be those units.

I guess there isn't one. Shame. I'll shut up now...

Alas, I'll agree with you 100% about the degrading state of documentation in the software world.  Stu does a reasonably good job keeping the WeatherCat documentation up, but WeatherCat is a very complicated program and getting more complex with every release.  The standards of documentation are plummeting and I think we are all worse for it.  There doesn't seem to be any sort of standardized mechanism for providing documentation for iOS apps at all.  That is extremely unfortunate because that is another deterrent against developing more sophisticated software for the iOS environment.  It is really sad to see to see hardware advancing by leaps and bounds, but the software that could take advantage of it becoming increasingly toylike and degenerate for lack of sufficient development and deployment infrastructure.

Like so many other things I see in life . . . . all I can say is: "oh well" . . . . . .

Cheers, Edouard

[jhoke]

Along these lines, is the mySQL schema documented somewhere?

I am looking at a number of different ways to use the SQL data, but a good understanding of the db schema would be great.. i.e.: are any fields 'calculated' what formats should be expected, what is stored where etc?

Yeah... I can run some tools to rev eng it, but I hate recreating the wheel