id,node_id,number,title,user,state,locked,assignee,milestone,comments,created_at,updated_at,closed_at,author_association,active_lock_reason,draft,pull_request,body,reactions,performed_via_github_app,state_reason,repo,type
1247010680,I_kwDOAMm_X85KU994,6633,Opening dataset without loading any indexes?,35968931,open,0,,,10,2022-05-24T19:06:09Z,2024-02-23T05:36:53Z,,MEMBER,,,,"### Is your feature request related to a problem?

Within pangeo-forge's internals we would like to call `open_dataset`, then `to_dict()`, and end up with a schema-like representation of the contents of the dataset. This works, but it also has the side-effect of loading all indexes into memory, even if we are loading the data values ""lazily"". 

### Describe the solution you'd like

@benbovy do you think it would be possible to (perhaps optionally) also avoid loading indexes upon opening a dataset, so that we actually don't load anything? The end result would act a bit like `ncdump` does.

### Describe alternatives you've considered

Otherwise we might have to try using xarray-schema or something but the suggestion here would be much neater and more flexible.

xref: https://github.com/pangeo-forge/pangeo-forge-recipes/issues/256

cc @rabernat @jhamman @cisaacstern ","{""url"": ""https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/6633/reactions"", ""total_count"": 3, ""+1"": 3, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,,13221727,issue