[Xastir-dev] Weather Changes

[n7qnm-lists at nwlink.com]

I'm starting to think about what I would like to do with Xastir in terms
of changes to the weather stuff; here's what I've come up with in terms of
some "design goals" and possible approaches -

1)  Separate the "weather input" processes from "mainline" Xastir, so that
adding a new "source" becomes simpler, and really just a matter of
"translating" one format to another.
2)  Define single common format for weather data that mainline Xastir
would read (and write - see below) - not what goes out over the air 3) 
Separate the "weather database" functionality from the mainline Xastir; so
that Xastir would not have to keep track of things like 24 hour precip,
pressure trends and so forth
4)  Add a "weather output" capability to Xastir, so that it could send
RECEIVED (net/TNC) weather data to an external "sink" in the defined
common format.   This would add the same sort of functionalit as the WXN
weather server and allow users to maintain historical records for multiple
stations

For a common format - I'm thinking METAR strings appear to be the "highest
common denominator" (i.e. - most complete data set that's already some
sort of standard).  Also, an XML DTD has already been defined for METAR
data, which would make coding conversion routines almost trivial.  If one
hasn't already been defined, I would develop a DTD for the APRS weather
string.  Then, conversions would be really easy.

For the database - I'm thinking the METEO (meteo.othello.ch) database
definitions (basically a set of sensor/observation pairs) would be
reasonably easy to adopt/extend and implement - I'd try to implement
something that could be database software (MYSQL/POSTGRESS) independent.

The design and some simple hacking with DTDs is about as far as I've
gotten - I wanted to get some feedback before I really get into things.

What's the group opinion on this?

Thanks!

Clay
N7QNM