1. Home
  2. guidance assigning centre identifier wis2 node

Guidance on assigning a Centre Identifier for a WIS2 Node

Activity Areas (1)

WMO Information System (WIS)

Summary

  • The centre identifier (centre-id) is an acronym as specified by the Member and endorsed by the PR of the Member and WMO.

  • It is a single identifier comprised of a top-level domain (TLD) and centre name. It represents the data publisher, distributor or issuing centre of a given dataset, data product, data granule or other resource.

  • The TLD list can be found here. 

  • centre name: may contain dashes (but not other special characters).

Examples

  • Algeria: dz-meteoalgerie
  • Kazakhstan: kz-kazhydromet
  • Uruguay: uy-inumet
  • St. Kitts and Nevis: kn-metservice
  • Singapore: 
    • sg-mss (WIS centre/NC)
    • sg-mss-asmc (DCPC)
  • Poland: pl-imgw
  • ECMWF: int-ecmwf

Reference

Excerpt from Guide to the WMO Information System (WMO-No.1061), Volume II - WIS 2.0. 2.6.1.2 Guidance on assigning a centre identifier for a WIS2 Node

The Centre Identifier (centre-id) is used in WIS2 to uniquely identify a participating WIS2 Node. The Centre Identifier must conform to the specification given in the WIS2 Topic Hierarchy (WTH), section 7.1.6 Centre identification (TODO CROSSREF).

The Centre Identifier comprises two dash-separated tokens.

Token 1 is a Top Level Domain (TLD) defined by IANA[1].

This is usually a simple choice for a Member. However, overseas territories require some thought. The recommended approach depends on the governance of the overseas territory. Take some French examples. La Reunion is a proper French “department” – it’s considered part of France, it uses the Euro. Here, we would use the “fr” TLD. New Caledonia is a French overseas territory with top-level-domain of “nc”. It has separate, devolved governance. The recommendation is to use “nc”. All that said, it’s a national decision which TLD to use.

Token 2 is a descriptive name for the centre and this may contain dashes (but not other special characters).

The descriptive name should be something recognisable - not only by our community, but by other users too. Basing things on the Web domain name is likely to ensure that centre identifiers remain unique within a particular country/territory. A UK example this time: the UK’s NMS is the Met Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk), so “metoffice” is better than “ukmo”[2]. Using the 4-letter GTS centre identifiers (CCCC) is not recommended because people unfamiliar with the GTS do not understand them.

The Centre Identifier specification says that larger organisations operating multiple centres may wish to register separate centre-ids for each centre. This is good practice. Keeping with the UK example, Met Office operates a NMC, 9 DCPCs and some WIS2 functions, so it’s important to split them out. For example:

  • uk-metoffice-nmc

  • uk-metoffice-vaac

  • uk-metoffice-globalcache

Using a system name in the centre-id is not a good idea because these may change over time. Functional designations are long-term durable. Appending `-test may be used to designate test WIS Nodes.

Appending “-test” may be used to designate test WIS Nodes. I don’t think we need that right now, because the whole of WIS2 is in test mode.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1]IANA Top Level Domains https://data.iana.org/TLD

[2]The “.gov” part of the domain name is superfluous for the purposes of WIS2. There is nothing preventing its use, but it does not add any value.

(Last update: 19 June 2024)