[gradsusr] [EXTERNAL] [BULK] Future of GRADS

[James L. Kinter Iii]

Thanks, Jennifer!

To add a little context, GrADS was supported by US federal agencies as part of a multi-agency, block grant to COLA over a period of a quarter century (1993-2019). No grant or other funds for GrADS have been available since that time, and, at present, nobody is paid to support/develop GrADS. Maintenance and support of the software and user community is on a volunteer basis, notably by Jennifer Adams, as well as by respondents to the GrADS User Forum. GrADS continues to meet the needs of thousands of users worldwide (including me), in both academic and operational use cases; however, as noted in this thread, the limitations of the code are becoming increasingly apparent as data sets grow and analytics become more complex. The development undertaken near the end of the funding period was intended to enable GrADS usage in conjunction with other codes, including Python (as Jennifer noted) and GIS applications, so some workarounds are possible. Others who have encountered limitations and have found solutions are welcome to respond to this thread.

***************************************************************
Jim Kinter
Professor, Climate Dynamics
Director, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
Director, Virginia Climate Center
284 Research Hall, Mail Stop 6C5
George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030 USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tel: (703) 993-5700 ** email: ikinter at gmu.edu<mailto:ikinter at gmu.edu> ** web: http://cola.gmu.edu<http://cola.gmu.edu/>
***************************************************************


From: gradsusr <gradsusr-bounces at gradsusr.org> on behalf of Adams, Jennifer M. (GSFC-619.0)[ADNET SYSTEMS INC] <jennifer.m.adams at nasa.gov>
Date: Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 5:21 PM
To: GrADS Users Forum <gradsusr at gradsusr.org>
Subject: Re: [gradsusr] [EXTERNAL] [BULK] Future of GRADS
GrADS and the GrADS Data Server are in maintenance mode. There have been updates since 2019 that are documented here:
https://github.com/j-m-adams/GrADS/blob/master/ChangeLog
https://github.com/j-m-adams/GrADS-Data-Server/blob/main/ChangeLog.
I am doing my best to support existing features in both packages during my spare time or when required for operational support at GES DISC. I continue to use GrADS almost every day, but I think it's safe to say that rewriting the GrADS I/O layer to support multithreading is unlikely. The recent additions to the python interface (GradsPy) allow users to leverage Python for I/O and do analysis and plotting with GrADS, or the reverse -- GrADS does the I/O and Python does the analysis and plotting. The get() and put() methods allow you to pass defined variables back and forth. Maybe those features can help you build a better workaround.
--Jennifer

--
Jennifer Miletta Adams
Senior Scientific Software Developer
Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)
NASA/GSFC, Code 619
Building 32, Room S159



From: gradsusr <gradsusr-bounces at gradsusr.org> on behalf of mike at weatherwatch.net.au <mike at weatherwatch.net.au>
Date: Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 9:02 PM
To: gradsusr at gradsusr.org <gradsusr at gradsusr.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [BULK] [gradsusr] Future of GRADS
Hi all,

Just wondering what the future of GRADS is at all, the last update for it was 2019 and with GRIB data getting more and more high res and larger, GRADS is getting left behind significantly in terms of performance.. I’ve got cases now with Australian BOM ACCESS data where it can take up to 10s to generate an image due to how high res it is thanks to GRADS being single threaded.

To overcome this, I used a “workaround” for most charts which involves segmenting a single chart into a 3x3 grid, getting grads to execute all 9 instances in parallel and then stitch the resulting panels together in a final image… problem is that it just doesn’t look “quite right” especially when contouring is involved.  This is the only way I can get huge data to load up quickly.  What is everyone else using these days to handle huge GRIB files that can generate charts quickly using multithreading? (needs to be able to run in a headless linux environment – no GUI at all, which is why GRADS was perfect at the time).

Cheers, Mike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gradsusr.org/pipermail/gradsusr/attachments/20231202/cadbe132/attachment-0001.html>