20010920: McIDAS 7.705 ADDE commands not accessing existing data

>From: Kenji Matsuura <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Delaware
>Keywords: 200109202134.f8KLYR116858 McIDAS ADDE

Kenji,

>I installed McIDAS 7.705 on Sun Ultra 80 running Solaris 8.

Since 7.80 is now available, I recommend that you upgrade to it.  One
big reason to do this is that the 7.80 version of the Unidata GUI
to McIDAS, MCGUI, has been converted to use of ADDE and it is where
I am concentrating interface development efforts in Unidata McIDAS.

>When I use GUI, I can plot surface observation map and contour it but
>when I do not use GUI and use command line I get the following messages
>and I cannot plot the map.
>
>SFCPLOT T USA
>Accessing Dataset Name = RTPTSRC/SFCHOURLY.ALL   
>PTDIST: Failed at SERVER REQUEST step                 
>SFCPLOT: PTDISP command failed                                        
>SFCPLOT - Done                              

When you say use the GUI, I will assume that you mean when you use MCGUI.
Please let me know if this is not the case (there is also a GUI from SSEC
that _is_ named GUI).

>Alsi when I type in the follwing at command line
>
>SFCLIST NY
>
>I get
>
>Number of reports = 0
>SFCLIST: done

Both the SFCLIST and SFCPLOT commands use ADDE to get data.  The 7.7x
version of MCGUI was not ADDEized; it got its data directly from locally
accessible data files.

>But there are data.  When I use other machine that share the same data,
>it can list the data. I cannot figure out what is the difference.

This is saying that on one machine you have datasets setup/defined
or have run DATALOC commands (either directly or through a BATCH invocation
of one sort or another), and on the other machine you have not.

As a quick test, I checked to see if you have the ADDE remote server
setup on the machine you are running an LDM on: climate.geog.udel.edu:

telnet climate.geog.udel.edu 503
Trying 128.175.30.101...
Connected to climate.geog.udel.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.

This told me that something is listening on port 503, the port used
for compressed McIDAS data transfers.

Next, try to see if climate is setup to serve image data available in
the Unidata-Wisconsin (LDM feed type MCIDAS) datastream:

DATALOC ADD RTIMAGES climate.geog.udel.edu
DSINFO IMAGE RTIMAGES
        Dataset Names of Type: IMAGE in Group: RTIMAGES

Name         NumPos   Content
------------ ------   --------------------------------------
ANTARCTIC       10    Antarctic IR Composite
EDFLOATER-I     10    Educational Floater
EDFLOATER-II    10    Educational Floater II
GE-IR           10    GOES-East North America IR
GE-IRTOPO       10    GOES-East IR/TOPO Composite
GE-VIS          10    GOES-East North America VIS
GE-VISTOPO      10    GOES-East VIS/TOPO Composite
GE-WV           10    GOES-East North America H2O
GEW-IR          10    GOES-East/West IR Composite
GEW-IRTOPO      10    GOES-East/West IR/TOPO Composite
GEW-VIS         10    GOES-East/West VIS Composite
GEW-VISTOPO     10    GOES-East/West VIS/TOPO Composite
GEW-WV          10    GOES-East/West H2O Composite
GW-IR           10    GOES-West Western US IR
GW-IRTOPO       10    GOES-West IR/TOPO Composite
GW-VIS          10    GOES-West Western US VIS
GW-VISTOPO      10    GOES-West VIS/TOPO Composite
GW-WV           10    GOES-West Western US H2O
MDR             10    Manually Digitized Radar
MDRTOPO         10    MDR/TOPO Composite
MOLL-IR         10    Mollweide Composite IR
MOLL-IRTOPO     10    Mollweide IR/TOPO Composite
MOLL-WV         10    Mollweide Composite H2O
RESFLOATER      10    Research Floater

DSINFO -- done

This tells me that the remote ADDE server is setup and runs.  Next, I
wanted to see what, if any, image data you have in this dataset.  To
test, I chose GOES-East IR images:

IMGLIST RTIMAGES/GE-IR.ALL
Image file directory listing for:RTIMAGES/GE-IR
 Pos Satellite/         Date       Time      Center   Band(s)
     sensor                                 Lat  Lon
 --- -------------  ------------  --------  ---- ---- ------------
   1  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  19:15:00    23   71 4
   2  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  10:15:00    23   71 4
   3  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  11:15:00    23   71 4
   4  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  12:15:00    23   71 4
   5  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  13:15:00    23   71 4
   6  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  14:15:00    23   71 4
   7  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  15:15:00    23   71 4
   8  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  16:15:00    23   71 4
   9  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  17:15:00    23   71 4
  10  G-8 IMG       20 SEP 01263  18:15:00    23   71 4
IMGLIST: done

This tells me three things:

o the ADDE server is setup correctly to serve this data
o you have been ingesting imagery from the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream
o you ingestion is behind

I offered the last observation based on the fact that the most recently
ingested GOES-East IR image was for 19:15 Z, and the time I ran this
was 22:08 Z.  If your ingest were uptodate, you would have had goth
the 20:15 and 21:15 images in your set.

The next thing was to check what surface data you have:

DATALOC ADD RTPTSRC climate.geog.udel.edu
DSINFO POINT RTPTSRC

        Dataset Names of Type: POINT in Group: RTPTSRC

Name         NumPos   Content
------------ ------   --------------------------------------
AIRCRAFT        10    Real-Time Aircraft data
FOUS14          10    Real-Time FOUS14 data
LIGHTNING       10    Real-Time Lightning data
PROF6MIN        10    Real-Time 6-Minute Profiler data
PROFHOURLY      10    Real-Time Hourly Profiler data
PTSRCS         100    All point data in MDXX files
SFCHOURLY       10    Real-Time SFC Hourly
SHIPBUOY        10    Real-Time Ship and Buoy data
SYNOPTIC        10    Real-Time SYNOPTIC data
UPPERMAND       10    Real-Time Upper Air (Mandatory)
UPPERSIG        10    Real-Time Upper Air (Significant)

DSINFO -- done

Finally, I tried the commands you listed above:

SF 1
ERASE
SFCPLOT T USA

This worked correctly.

SFCLIST NY

This also worked correctly.

What these tests mean is that climate is correctly setup to serve
at least the RTIMAGES and RTPTSRC datasets.  So, suspecting that
your other machine is not setup, you could point it to use climate's
data through the remote server.  Try the following from the 'other'
machine (assuming that it is not climate):

DATALOC ADD RTIMAGES CLIMATE.GEOG.UDEL.EDU
DATALOC ADD RTPTSRC  CLIMATE.GEOG.UDEL.EDU
DATALOC ADD RTWXTEXT CLIMATE.GEOG.UDEL.EDU
DATALOC ADD RTGRIDS  CLIMATE.GEOG.UDEL.EDU

and then retry the SFCPLOT and SFCLIST commands above.

>If
>you have any suggestions that I can look into, I would appreciate it.

I always hate to recommend for people to upgrade to new versions of
software, but in this case I think you would be much better off if you
did.  After upgrading, I can work with you to get dataset definitions
setup on your machine(s) and also walk you through the newly revamped
MCGUI interface.

>Thank you for your assistance.

If there is anything I can do to help you get going on an upgrade, please
let me know.

Tom Yoksas