Get ride of "noncoordinates" as a name?

[shoyer]

As @ToddSmall has pointed out (in #202), "noncoordinates" is a confusing name -- it's something defined by what it isn't, not what it is.

Unfortunately, our best alternative is "variables", which already has a lot of meaning from the netCDF world (and which we already use).

Related: #211

[shoyer]

I'm now thinking that I would like to rename the current Variable and Coordinate objects to Block and IndexBlock. The name is borrowed from the pandas.Block object which they resemble. The main distinction from pandas is that our blocks have a bit more associated metadata (dims, attrs and encoding). Thoughts?

Once we rename variables to blocks (at least for the public API), we can safely use the name "variables" in place of "noncoordinates". DataStores should also probably switch to calling their contents "blocks" instead of "variables" (cc @akleeman).

[akleeman]

I personally am not familiar with pandas.Block objects, so I find the name uniformative. That combined with the fact that renaming Variable to Block would break alignment with netCDF naming conventions (so confuse users coming from that background) makes me hesitant about the change. I think I'd be more excited about finding a better name for noncoordinates (fields? ) instead of renaming variables (which would also cause non-backwards compatibility)

[shoyer]

I don't think it's that terrible to be cryptic with the name for the xray.Variable object, because this object isn't really part of the public API. But I do agree that the connection with netCDF naming conventions is nice.

Also, to clarify, I was thinking of only identifying non-coordinates as "variables" in Dataset.__repr__. I agree that the property ds.variables should not be reused for something other than what it currently is.

[shoyer]

How about calling the arrays in a Dataset "store arrays" or just "arrays" for short?

• Variable -> StoreArray
• Coordinate -> IndexArray
• Dataset.variables -> Dataset.arrays
• DataArray.variable -> DataArray.array

[shoyer]

I guess this is coming full circle back to the name XArray now...

[shoyer]

New proposal... don't even bother renaming Variable and Coordinate, but switch Dataset.variables to Dataset.arrays and DataArray.variable to DataArray.array. Really, I just want to eliminate the confusing Dataset attribute... and arrays is shorter anyways.

[shoyer]

@akleeman What do you think of removing access to the underlying array of xray.Variable objects entirely from the public dataset API? I think that is my preference... nobody really wants to work with those objects, anyways.

[shoyer]

This has been resolved per my last comment.