[webservices] A question of location ID, how to represent empty IDs in XML?

[Chad Trabant]

On Jul 31, 2014, at 12:20 AM, Robert Barsch <barsch at egu.eu> wrote:

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> Dear all,
> 
> Maybe some stupid questions: Are there actually any valid use cases
> for having to distinct between empty and unknown location code within
> the data? If so, does this than also apply for network, station,
> channel codes? So if the community opts to go for unknown as well as
> an empty/unset markers for the location field shouldn't be the same
> markers used for unknown/unset network etc.?

Hi Robert,

There is no rule in the SEED world preventing two channel names differing only by location ID, in fact it happens often.  Since location can be empty it means that we can have both XX.STA.00.LHZ and XX.STA..LHZ, if location were described as "unknown" these two become ambiguous.  I do not know off hand of any cases where the differences are between an empty location ID and an filled one, but it would be a weird case to eliminate (or even describe) in the specification.

>>> In terms of existing StationXML parsers I assume most are just 
>>> stripping whitespaces from the location code and thus “”  and “
>>> “ should already work resulting in minimal disruption in the
>>> users’ workflows.
> 
> Usually without DTD or XML schema definition, all whitespaces are
> significant whitespaces and should be preserved by any XML parsers.

Ah.  I think that is basically what I have been finding, thanks for the confirmation.

Chad


> I
> guess Lion meant with StationXML parser more than the plain XML
> parser. I don't know what other clients do, but ObsPy strips
> internally all Net/Sta/Loc/Cha field values.
> 
> Cheers,
> Robert
> 
> 
> PS: for some reason did my previous mail sent last weekend not appear
> at this list, also I didn't receive all replies to this thread as
> archived in
> http://www.iris.washington.edu/pipermail/webservices/2014-July/thread.html
> (e.g.
> http://www.iris.washington.edu/pipermail/webservices/2014-July/000554.html
> was missing)- I didn't get any bounce or error message from mailman
> either? Any idea?
> 
> - -- 
> Dr. Robert Barsch
> 
> EGU Office Munich
> Luisenstr. 37
> 80333 Munich
> Germany
> 
> Phone: +49-89-21806565
> Fax:   +49-89-218017855
> eMail: barsch at egu.eu
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