I want to install the netCDF plugin for Geoserver, in order to publish radar data in netCDF format. I'm following the instructions listed at Geosolutions IT Training.
I have to add
-Duser.timezone=GMT
and
-Dorg.geotools.shapefile.datetime=true
to the setenv.bat.
As stated in the training:
Support for timestamp is not part of the DBF standard (used in
shapefile for attributes). The DBF standard only supports Date, and
only few applications understand it. As long as shapefiles are only
used for GeoServer input that is not a problem, but the above setting
will cause issues if you have WFS enabled and users also download
shapefiles as GetFeature output: if the feature type extracted has
timestamps, then the generated shapefile will have as well, making it
difficult to use the generated shapefile in desktop applications. As a
rule of thumb, if you also need WFS support it is advisable to use an
external store (PostGIS, Oracle) instead of shapefile. Of course, if
all that’s needed is a date, using shapefile as an index without the
above property is fine as well.
I'm not sure I understand this correctly..so my question is:
Adding datetime=true in the setenv.bat will affect my capability to download WFS features in a .shp format, even if they don't have a Date field?
Best Answer
The DBF standard use only year, month and day, and most of the tools expected to have dates only in this format.
If you add hours and minutes, your clients may not understand this format and will not able to use your data.
So you have to ask to whom the data are intended : if it is an internal use, it is OK. If you want external (and unknown) users to use it, it could be problematic.