This version of the BES requires libdap-3.20.3
The BES uses a number of configuration files, and until now, a site has to customize these for their server. Each server installation would overwrite those files. No more. Now you can put all your configuration values in
/etc/bes/site.conf
And be configent that they will never be overwritten by a new install. The
site.conf file is always read last, so parameters set there override values
set elsewhere.
A new cache has been added to the BES for Metadata Responses (aka, the MDS or Metadata Store). This cache is unlike the other BES caches in that it is intended to be operated as either a 'cache' or a 'store.' In the latter case, items added will never be removed - it is an open-ended place where metadata response objects will be kept indefinitely. The MDS contents (as a cache or a store) will survive Hyrax restarts.
The MDS was initially built to speed responses when data are stored on high- latency devices like Amazon's S3 storage system. We have special features in Hyrax to handle data kept on those kinds of data stores and the MDS can provide clients with fast access to the metadata for those data very quickly. After our initial tests of the MDS, we decided to make it a general feature of the server, available to data served from data stored on spinning disk in addition to S3.
Note: The MDS is not used for requests that using server-side function processing.
The MDS configuration can be found in the dap.conf configuration file. Here are the default settings:
- Setting the 'path' to null disables uses of the MDS.
DAP.GlobalMetadataStore.path = @datadir@/mds DAP.GlobalMetadataStore.prefix = mds
- Setting 'size' to zero makes the MDS hold objects forever; setting a positive non-zero size makes the MDS behave like a cache, purging responses when the size is exceeded. The number is the size of the cache volume in megabytes.
DAP.GlobalMetadataStore.size = 200
- The MDS writes a ledger of additions and removals. By default the ledger is kept in 'mds_ledger.txt' in the directory used to start the BES.
DAP.GlobalMetadataStore.ledger = @datadir@/mds_ledger.txt
For datasets that contain geo-spatial data, we now provide the option to get those data (and related metadata) encoded using the covjson format. (See https://covjson.org/). Thanks to Corey Hemphill, Riley Rimer, and Lewis McGibbney for this contribution.
Hyrax 1.15 has prototype support for subset-in-place of HDF5 and NetCDF4 data files that are stored on AWS S3. Data files stored in S3 must be configured for use with this feature of Hyrax. To configure files for use with this feature, a special metadata file must be built and installed in the MDS. For this feature, the MDS should be run in 'store' mode.
Contact us for details. We welcome feedback on this new feature.
The software has a known problem with requests for very large numbers of variables in a single URL.
It has long been possible to define 'catalogs' for data that reside on other kinds of data stores (e.g., relational data base systems). The datasets defined by these catalogs appear(ed) in the directory listings as if they are directories of data files, just like datasets that actually are files on a spinning disk.
We have generalized this system so that it is much easier to use. As an example of new Catalog sub-system's ease of use, we have implemented a new module that reads information about datasets from NASA's Common Metadata Repository (CMR) and uses that to display a Virtual Directory for NASA data, where the hierarchical relationships between data files is derived entirely from data read a CMR-support web API.
This software is currently available in source form only - contact us if you would like to extend the BES Catalog system for your own data collections. To build Hyrax with this feature enabled, build either in developer mode (./configure ... --enable-developer) or using the spepcial configuration option --enable-cmr.
- CF option: Enhance the support of handling the scale_factor and add_offset to follow the CF. The scale_factor and add_offset rule for the MOD16A3 product is different than other MODIS products. We make an exception for this product only to ensure the scale_factor and add_offset follow the CF conventions.
CF option:
- Add the support of the HDF-EOS5 Polar Stereographic(PS) and Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area(LAMAZ) grid projection files. Both projection files can be found in NASA LANCE products.
- Add the HDF-EOS5 grid latitude and longitude cache support. This is the same as what we did for the HDF-EOS2 grid.
- Add the support for TROP-OMI, new OMI level 2 and OMPS-NPP product.
- Removed the internal reserved netCDF-4 attributes for DAP output.
- Make the behavior of the drop long string BES key consistent with the current limitation of netCDF Java.
- HYRAX-10 The fileout netCDF-4 doesn't generate the correct dimensions for aggregated files
- HYRAX-247 elements in a constrained DMR sometimes have 'random' order
- HYRAX-248 fileout_gdal seems to build broken JP2k files
- HYRAX-362 Make the GeoTiff (GDAL) handler work with NCML aggregations
- HYRAX-554 BES now includes DMR++; hack the configure script WRT libcurl
- HYRAX-561 The fileout_netcdf, and/or the ncml_handler code does not clean up the temporary netCDF result file if the requesting client is killed during the transaction.
- HYRAX-588 Gateway HTML Form Rendering Failure
- HYRAX-591 Tests that create files fail 'make distcheck' (e.g., the tests for HYRAX-561)
- HYRAX-595 The "SHOW HELP" button in the DAP2 Data Request Form points to a broken link
- HYRAX-598 NULL pointer dereference in D4ParserSax2
- HYRAX-599 Symbolic links to data not showing up in Hyrax 1.14.0 RPMs on CentOS 7
- HYRAX-600 Unable to startup Hyrax installed from RPM on boot on Centos OS 7
- HYRAX-603 The OLFS authentication code is no longer compatible with the current deployment "bootstrap".
- HYRAX-612 Renaming the result of an aggregation (only join new?) fails.
- HYRAX-613 OLFS installation bootstrap is broken on CentOS-7
- HYRAX-621 Replace logo.gif with a transparent logo.png in Hyrax
- HYRAX-623 Fix the CI build
- HYRAX-630 The Keywords feature of libdap is hosed
- HYRAX-645 Build issue causes make -j check to fail
- HYRAX-646 Target collect-coverage-data doesn't work
- HYRAX-647 The DDS print_das() method does not produce the same DAS as the DAS::print() method for Grids sometimes
- HYRAX-648 MDS tests 61 and 62 fail on the first run of ./testsuite --conf=bes.mds.conf
- HYRAX-670 Reading values from olfs.xml file is fragile
- HYRAX-692 cppunit-config is no longer present in cppunit
- HYRAX-721 The implementation of Sequence in the XSLT based Data Request Form (IFH) is broken
- HYRAX-723 The DMR++ parser doesn't see a newline (cr?) as whitepspace.
- HYRAX-745 Broker service needs to make correct links for data access.
- HYRAX-755 The build_dmrpp code seems to fail on DMRs/Files with several variables.
- HYRAX-756 get_dmrpp fails on datasets where variables are not in the root group
- HYRAX-764 Fileout_netcdf returns empty response for dataset when no query is provided.
- HYRAX-767 Change the Data Request Form code (all 3 versions) so that it URL encodes the query before using it.
- HYRAX-775 The DMR response from the MDS has the xml:base attribute in a random place.
- HYRAX-790 geogrid is failing in OLFS regression tests
- HYRAX-791 w10n syntax collides with URI encoding rules enforced by recent Tomcat
- HYRAX-794 Some tests regarding the enum type in the netcdf handler fail randomly
- HYRAX-801 ASAN Reveals 104 issues in the BES
- HYRAX-802 Issues remain in the Aggregation rename bug
- HYRAX-803 NcML Memory errors
- HYRAX-804 Error in ResponseBuilderTest - a unit test
- HYRAX-805 fileout_netcdf memory errors
- HYRAX-818 showNode removes catalog name from the path name of the node - stop it.
- HYRAX-833 Update baselines for BES cmdlm tests
- HYRAX-837 libdap seems to return DAP2 and DAP3.2 DDX responses in kind of random way.
- HYRAX-844 THREDDS catalog produced by Hyrax no longer work with Unidata code because of time zone issues
- HYRAX-845 BESUtil::get_time() has a pointer problem
- HYRAX-851 Memory leak in BESCatalog
BESInterface/XMLInterface improved
Testing/Logging Improvements
New Server function: range() This function returns the min and max values of a variable and, for a vector, a boolean indicating that it is monotonic.
GeoTiff file can now be aggregated.
See NEWS for more information.
New features:
-
hdf5_handler adds support for sinusodial projections.
-
ncml_handler adds support for the aggregation and metadata manipulation of remotely located datasets. This new capanbility utilizes the exisiting gateway_handler and allows the ncml_handler to aggregate anything the gateway_handler can read.
This release fixes a number of bugs:
-
Improved error logging (as in errors now get logged) https://opendap.atlassian.net/browse/HYRAX-302
-
Improved server side function response assembly repaired: https://opendap.atlassian.net/browse/HYRAX-352 https://opendap.atlassian.net/browse/HYRAX-342
-
Stopped prepending "nc_" to netCDF file out responses whose download filename begins with a digit: https://opendap.atlassian.net/browse/HYRAX-341
-
Repaired various BES timeout issues. https://opendap.atlassian.net/browse/HYRAX-341
Added support for cached metadata objects.
Server functions can now return multiple values using specially-named Structure variables.
The code now builds using gcc-6.
See NEWS for other details.
See the INSTALL file for build instructions, including special instructions for building from a (git) cloned repo. This code can build one of two distinct ways and that requires a tiny bit setup.
For more information on Hyrax and the BES, please visit our documentation wiki at docs.opendap.org. This will include the latest install and build instructions, the latest configuration information, tutorials, how to develop new modules for the BES, and more.
This version has significant performance improvements for aggregations, particularly those that use the JoinNew directive.
Contents
- DAP2 versus DAP4 support
- What's here: What files are in the distribution
- About the BES: What exactly is this
- Configuration: How to configure the BES
- Testing: Once built and configured, how do you know it works?
The code on the master branch now supports both DAP2 and DAP4 responses, and the data format handlers do as well. Because of that, it must be linked with libdap 3.14, not libdap older versions of libdap (libdap 3.14 contains support for both DAP2 and DAP4, while the older 'libdap' supports only DAP2). If you need to get the DAP2-only version of the software, use the branch named 'dap2'. Please commit only fixes there.
Each of the handlers, which can be built as submodules within this code, also has DAP2 and DAP4 support on their master branch and a 'dap2' branch for the DAP2-only code.
Here there's a bes-config script which will be installing in $prefix/bin that can be used to determine where the libraries and their header files have been installed. This directory also contains some documentation files.
dispatch: This is where the bulk of the BES source code resides. server: The BES server and standalone executables; build using dispatch cmdln: A command line client which can communicate with the bes server.
dap: A module that implements the (OPeN)DAP access.
modules: All the modules that are part of a standard Hyrax distribution. The configure script looks for their dependencies and only tries to build the ones that can be built. Note that the HDF4 and 5 modules are pulled in from separate git repositories.
xmlcommand: The BES/dispatch software is a framework. The basic commands recognized by it are defined and implemented by software in this directory.
standalone: The 'standalone version of the server; used for testing.
apache: An Apache module, currently not part of the default build
ppt: The PPT implementation. The BES uses PPT for its communication
templates: A collection of source files which can be used as templates when you write your own handlers/modules, et cetera.
conf: Where the automake and autoconf configuration files live
docs: Where some bes documentation resides
The latest and most comprehensive Hyrax documentation is here.The BES API Documentation is here
Once the BES software has been installed, you will need to make a few
changes to the BES configuration file, which is the bes.conf located in
prefix/etc/bes/bes.conf. Module and handler configuration files will
be installed in the prefix/etc/bes/modules directory.
Only a few parameters need to be modified to get the BES up and running for the first time. These parameters are located at the top of the configuration file are are:
BES.ServerAdministrator
- set this to an email address that can be used for users to contact if there are issues with your installation of the server.
BES.User=user_name
BES.Group=group_name
- set these to a valid username and groupname on your system. We recommend that you create a username and groupname called bes that has permissions to write only to the BES installation directory. We'll need to write to the log file, and that's about it.
BES.LogName=./bes.log
- Set this to the full path and file name for where you want the BES log file to be written.
With this configuration you will be able to start the BES. No handlers or modules have been installed yet, so you won't be able to serve data, but the BES should run.
For the BES to run with Hyrax, additional changes will need to be made
to the dap.conf and dap-server.conf files, which are located in the
modules directory prefix/etc/bes/modules. The dap module should be
installed by default with the BES. If the dap.conf file is not found, be
sure that you have libdap installed. The dap-server module, known as the
General purpose handlers, adds responses for the DAP ascii response, the
DAP info response, and the DAP html form response. You will need to get
the dap-server module. You should see a dap-server.conf file in the
modules directory.
The changes required for Hyrax are:
BES.Catalog.catalog.RootDirectory = path_to_root_data_directory
- Find the BES.Catalog.catalog.RootDirectory parameter in dap.conf. Set this to the root directory of your data. If you're serving data stored in files, this is the place in the file system where those files are stored.
BES.Catalog.catalog.Include=;
- This parameter specifies what files/directories are included in the list of nodes in the catalog. The default is to show everything. After this parameter is looked at, the Exclude parameter is then looked at to see what files you might want to exclude.
BES.Catalog.catalog.Exclude=^..*;
- This parameter specifies what files/directories to include in the list of nodes in the catalog. The default, shown here, is to exclude any files or directories that starts with a dot (.)
The only possible configuration parameter that you may need to change is the one that maps a file to a data handler. This parameter is called BES.catalog.TypeMatch, and is found in each of the data handler configuration files, such as nc.conf. The default values should work.
The value of this parameter is a semicolon separated list that matches the name you used in the BES.modules parameter with different datasets. The BES uses regular expressions to identify different types of datasets. In the example given in the file, any dataset name that ends in '.nc' will be accessed using the netcdf hander (because the name 'nc' is used here with the regular expression '.*.nc'; note that the BES uses regular expressions like Unix grep, not file globbing patterns like a command shell). Since the name 'nc' was associated with the netcdf module in the modules section, the netcdf module will be used to access any dataset whose name that ends in '.nc'.
The regular expressions shown in the examples are simple. However, the entire dataset name is used, so it's easy to associate different modules with datasets based on much more than just the 'file name extension' even though that is the most common case.
To test your regular expression for the TypeMatch parameter, or the Include and Exclude parameters, use the supplied besregtest program. Simply run besregtest to discover its usage.
By default, The BES for Hyrax comes with a suite of handlers that read a number of data formats. However, you can install custom handlers that are not distributed by default. I'll use the SQL handler as an example.
Get the SQL handler source code from http://github.com/opendap/, making sure that the version supports Hyrax. Expand the tar.gz file and follow the instructions with the following caveat: If you have installed the BES using a prefix other than /usr/local (the default), make sure that the correct bes-config is being run. If you are having problems compiling or linking the handler, try using not only --prefix=... but also --with-bes=... when you configure the handler.
Once built, install the handler using 'make install'. This will install
the BES module and a configuration file to use for that module. Each
module will have its own configuration file. In this case it is nc.conf
and installed in the prefix/etc/bes/modules directory. The next time
the BES is run, this configuration file will be read and the netcdf
module loaded. No modifications are necessary.
To test the server, open a new terminal window and start the bes by using
the bes control script besctl, which is installed in prefix/bin.
using the -c switch to name the configuration file. If the server standalone
starts correctly it should print something like the following to stdout:
[jimg@zoe sbin]$ besctl start
BES install directory: <prefix>/bin
Starting the BES daemon
PID: <process_id> UID: <uid of process>
Go back to your first window and run the bescmdln program. Use the -h (host) and -p (port) switches to tell it how to connect to the BES.
[jimg@zoe bin]$ bescmdln -p 10002 -h localhost
Type 'exit' to exit the command line client and 'help' or '?' to display
the help screen
BESClient>
Try some simple commands:
BESClient> show help;
<showHelp>
<response>
...
</response>
</showHelp>
BESClient>
Note that all commands must end with a semicolon except 'exit'.
Now try to get a DAP response using a handler you registered (the BES supports a fairly complex syntax which I won't explain fully here):
BESClient> set container in catalog values n1, data/nc/fnoc1.nc;
BESClient> define d1 as n1;
BESClient> get das for d1;
Attributes {
u {
String units "meter per second";
String long_name "Vector wind eastward component";
String missing_value "-32767";
String scale_factor "0.005";
}
v {
String units "meter per second";
String long_name "Vector wind northward component";
String missing_value "-32767";
String scale_factor "0.005";
}
lat {
String units "degree North";
}
lon {
String units "degree East";
}
time {
String units "hours from base_time";
}
NC_GLOBAL {
String base_time "88- 10-00:00:00";
String title " FNOC UV wind components from 1988- 10 to 1988- 13.";
}
DODS_EXTRA {
String Unlimited_Dimension "time_a";
}
}
BESClient> exit
[jimg@zoe bin]$
If you got something similar (you would have used a different dataset name from "data'nc'fnoc1.nc" and thus would get a different DAS response) the BES is configured correctly and is running.
To stop the BES use the bes control script with the stop option:
[jimg@zoe sbin]$ besctl stop
Note: Constraints and the bes command line client
Constraints are added to the 'define' command using the modifier 'with' like so:
define d as nscat with nscat.constraint="WVC_LAT";
If there is a list of containers instead of just one, then there can be a list of .constraint="" clauses.
The OPeNDAP BES code is copyrighted using the GNU Lesser GPL. See the
file COPYING or contact the Free Software Foundation, Inc., at 59 Temple
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA. Older versions of the BES were
copyrighted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research;
see the file COPYRIGHT_UCAR.
The BES uses PicoSHA2 - a library that provides an implementation of the
SHA256 hashing algorithm; its copyright follows
Copyright (C) 2017 okdshin
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.