Get Involved — OPeNDAP (original) (raw)

OPeNDAP is an open-source software that aims to make large-scale data more accessible to everyone. To achieve our long standing mission, we need help from our broader community.

How can you contribute to OPeNDAP?

There are many ways to get involved with OPeNDAP. We think the best way to contribute is to first identify which way you want to contribute.

Beginner in DAP

First, consider the following steps

• Play with Pydap, a pure python implementation of the DAP protocol often used as a backend to xarray. While it is mostly used for accessing remote data, it is much more flexible.
• Interact with our tutorial demonstrations for accessing remote NASA data. See use cases and tutorials.
• Learn about constraint expressions in the DAP2 and DAP4 implementations. The official OPeNDAP documentation has useful resources, which complement the tutorial section.
• Join OPeNDAP’s Discourse forum! Here you will find useful information in the form of Q&As, or relevant information under the New to OPeNDAP category.

You can now contribute in any of the following ways:

• Improve the OPeNDAP documentation. Fix typos, propose new applications and tutorials using OPeNDAP. We are a very small team, and the official documentation can quickly become outdated. Help us identify and fix broken links and update README files on the many packages on OPeNDAP github. We appreciate all your help fixing these!
• Spread the word! This can come in the form of new tutorial notebooks, blogs, white papers and presentations, and youtube videos. Reach out to us on Discourse under the Community category, we’d love to hear about the ways OPeNDAP is being used!
• If you are already using OPeNDAP to access data via the Hyrax server, and give a talk or publish an article, cite us! Learn here how to properly cite our work.

Proficient in some DAP

• Improve pydap! Pydap remains widely used by pythonistas and in need of a much needed makeover. Open a Github issue to request a new feature or report a bug. Reach out to us on Discourse under General Usage. Include the tag `_pydap_`.
• Answer questions on Discourse. The success of OPeNDAP’s Discourse depends largely on an active community to come together and help each other. Many users have the same questions over and over, and by simply providing an answer, you greatly help a huge amount of interested users.
• Play with our Hyrax server, available for installation from docker Hub and from source code. Follow our Hyrax documentation and tutorials for serving data, and let us know about ways to improve Hyrax or its documentation!
• Suggest a feature or improvement by opening an issue in Github on one of the the Hyrax, BES, OLFS or libdap4 issue trackers.
• Talk to us in Discourse, under the General Usage category. Include the `_hyrax_` tag for all Hyrax related.

Expert in all DAP

• Talk to us in Discourse, specially if you have developed code that uses the OPeNDAP protocol. Find us under the Internals and Design category. We really want to hear from you and collaborate.
• Volunteer to work on an open issue in one of the packages and libraries OPeNDAP develops.
• Become a maintainer of one of the open-source libraries and packages that implement the DAP protocol. This will allow you to Open and Close issues, Review and Approve Pull Requests. Your efforts will help inform OPeNDAP and guide the development of Hyrax and all DAP related.