User-guide - pandas : Add alternative to xarray.Dataset.from_dataframe

doc/ecosystem.rst

@@ -74,6 +74,7 @@ Extend xarray capabilities
 - `Collocate <https://github.com/cistools/collocate>`_: Collocate xarray trajectories in arbitrary physical dimensions
 - `eofs <https://ajdawson.github.io/eofs/>`_: EOF analysis in Python.
 - `hypothesis-gufunc <https://hypothesis-gufunc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>`_: Extension to hypothesis. Makes it easy to write unit tests with xarray objects as input.
+- `ntv-pandas <https://github.com/loco-philippe/ntv-pandas>`_ : A tabular analyzer and a semantic, compact and reversible converter for multidimensional and tabular data
 - `nxarray <https://github.com/nxarray/nxarray>`_: NeXus input/output capability for xarray.
 - `xarray-compare <https://github.com/astropenguin/xarray-compare>`_: xarray extension for data comparison.
 - `xarray-dataclasses <https://github.com/astropenguin/xarray-dataclasses>`_: xarray extension for typed DataArray and Dataset creation.

doc/user-guide/pandas.rst

@@ -110,6 +110,26 @@ work even if not the hierarchical index is not a full tensor product:
     s[::2]
     s[::2].to_xarray()
 
+Lossless and reversible conversion
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The previous ``Dataset`` example shows that the conversion is not reversible (lossy roundtrip) and
+that the size of the ``Dataset`` increases.
+
+Particularly after a roundtrip, the following deviations are noted:
+
+- a non-dimension Dataset ``coordinate`` is converted into ``variable``
+- a non-dimension DataArray ``coordinate`` is not converted
+- ``dtype`` is not allways the same (e.g. "str" is converted to "object")
+- ``attrs`` metadata is not conserved
+
+To avoid these problems, the third-party `ntv-pandas <https://github.com/loco-philippe/ntv-pandas>`__ library offers lossless and reversible conversions between
+``Dataset``/ ``DataArray`` and pandas ``DataFrame`` objects.
+
+This solution is particularly interesting for converting any ``DataFrame`` into a ``Dataset`` (the converter find the multidimensional structure hidden by the tabular structure).
+
+The `ntv-pandas examples <https://github.com/loco-philippe/ntv-pandas/tree/main/example>`__ show how to improve the conversion for the previous ``Dataset`` example and for more complex examples.
+
 Multi-dimensional data
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~