dods_byte Byte::value()
. Sure you have to downcast from BaseType to Byte in order to use it, but you have to figure out you have a Byte to use Byte::buf2val() anyway, so what's the big deal? Having a method that returns the value would simplify code that reads from data sets to extract meta data (like lat/lon corner points, et c.).
We need to rethink the ancillary file/directory stuff. I don't think it's ever been used...
Along the same lines as the previous item, consider removing the Part enum and adopting the convention that the first variable added is the array and any subsequent variables are maps.