How to deal with values at e.g. boundaries, hydraulic structures?

[hrajagers]

Alternative 1:

• set_value(“boundaries:hoekvanholland:water_level”, 2.0)

Alternative 2:

• get_value("boundaries")
• identify boundary index
• set_value_at_index("boundary_water_level", 2.0)

[hrajagers]

Similar to interpolation question "get water_level at (x,y)"
Distinguish between BMI with basic functions, and convenience (framework) functions on top of BMI

[hrajagers]

Alternative 1 can be slow: string parsing every time

Alternative 3:

• item = get_input_item_handle(“boundaries:hoekvanholland:water_level”)
• set_value(item, 2.0)

This is already more in line with Alternative 2.

[mdpiper]

This issue has come up in work with @rmcd-mscb.

[ipelupessy]

I think for boundaries: these can be implemented as seperate grids, ie one or more boundaries are refered to with different grid indices. These can be (depending on the implementation of the code) be really references to seperate grids, or references to a subset of the main grid. The issue is here a way to let the same variable life on different grids...

for hydraulic structures, recording stations etc: these would benefit from #14, they need a way to represent non-grid data (e.g. a set of sampling stations).