Direct access to netCDF files over the network

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: Direct access to netCDF files over the network
• From: James Gallagher <jimg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 09:28:11 PDT

This is an announcement of the first beta release of the Distributed
Oceanographic Data System (DODS) (http://dods.gso.uri.edu/). The software is
freely available via anonymous ftp at ftp://dods.gso.uri.edu/pub/dods/ in
both source form (you will need the GNU C++ compiler and libg++; available at
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/) or binary form for selected platforms.

The Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS) is an effort to
facilitate widespread exchange of scientific data sets between scientists
over the Internet. DODS is based on existing data access tools; rather than
developing a self contained system, it makes extensive use of existing data
access APIs and the World Wide Web. DODS is being developed by the University
of Rhode Island and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DODS can be used to make netCDF data files available over the Internet and it
can also be used to adapt existing software which use the netCDF API (by
re-linking) to read data served by a DODS data server. In principle, any
program written using netCDF can be adapted to read data from a DODS data
server - in other words any program which uses netcdf can become a client in
the DODS client-server system. Included in the source and binary
distributions are two freely available programs which have already been
modified (re-linked).

With a client program accessing data from a netCDF server, it is possible
access a small subset of a large dataset over the Internet without copying
the entire dataset (as you would have to do with FTP or AFS). The client can
see changes to the netCDF dataset, e.g. when new records are added (which
would not be possible with FTP). Finally, the client can also access
cross-sections of variable data without paging large amounts of data across
the network (as you would have to do with NFS, for example).

While DODS currently supports netCDF only, we plan support for other data
access APIs including JGOFS. As new APIs are added to DODS, existing clients
will be able to read any of those data sets, even those stored in a `foreign'
API or format.

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__________________________________________________________________________

James Gallagher                  The Distributed Oceanographic Data System
jgallagher@xxxxxxxxxxx                            http://dods.gso.uri.edu/