Adding netCDF support to HDF

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: Adding netCDF support to HDF
• From: chouck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1992 09:40:32 -0600

Hello everyone,

        We here at NCSA (the home of HDF) are actively investigating
adding a netCDF interface to HDF.   Our implementation would be a
call-compatatible superset of the existing netCDF interface.  
[We are asking for funding for this initiative from 
NSF as well as NASA's EOSDIS (Earth Observing System Data 
Information System) project.  EOSDIS is interested in 10-bit data, 
among other things, so extensions to the netCDF interface will be 
required].

        A prototype implementation is currently being designed to
determine how HDF needs to be modified to accomodate the netCDF data 
model.  Our basic abstraction is to represent netCDF structures
as HDF V-Groups.  It will then be possible to integrate netCDF objects
with the rest of the HDF tool suite; a user could easily associate a 
24-bit raster image with a netCDF variable, for example.  Such an
integration will then allow tools written for netCDF and tools
written for HDF to both interact intelligently with the new data
files.

        As part of this effort, we would like to solicit information 
and opinions from the netCDF community as to how they currently use 
netCDF and what they would like to see expanded / improved / etc...  

        The recent discussions about storing a large number of small 
records is a case in point.  The EOSDIS project is talking about huge 
data-sets as well as large numbers of moderate sized data sets, but 
obivously there is a need for the efficient storage of small record 
objects.  We had not anticipated this need until it was brought up 
in this mailing-list.

        Any and all comments and opinions will be greatly appreciated.


-Chris Houck
(chouck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)

• Follow-Ups:
  • Adding netCDF support to HDF
    • From: Russ Rew