Channel entities as components of lists/vectors

[javiquinte]

On behalf of technicians from Alcatel (ASN)
It would be much better for processing and less redundant if, instead of channel entities repeating the whole structure thousands of times, one could express the attributes as long lists (e.g. x_coordinates as a list containing all X coordinates).
The resulting metadata would be much smaller and actually nobody expects a person to read that, but to access it programatically.

[javiquinte]

Yes, this is reasonable and we will implement it. Potentially, we will rename the single attributes in an upper level with a plural like x_coordinates.

[rcasey-earthscope]

Before doing so, this StackOverflow chat helps give consideration to the options.

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/429320/representing-a-large-list-of-complex-objects-in-json

For comparison, StationXML represents its instrument response arrays of columns as annotated rows with attendant attributes:

https://service.earthscope.org/fdsnws/station/1/query?network=II&sta=AAK&channel=BHZ&level=response