FEP - Format Use by a Researcher - Adam Szabo - CDF

1. Format (Format System) Identification

CDF v2.6, SFDU, ASCII, proprietary binary

2. Original Motivation

WIND and IMP 8 magnetometer data dissemination required the use of commonly recognized data formats.

3. Data Types

All Processing levels
Time series

4. Support

Internal programming staff
CDHF support of CDF format

5. Software

Data processing software (C)
Data visualization software (IDL)

6. Environment

    Sun Unix Workstations
PC desktops
Primary science interfacing through IDL

    

7. Usage

CDF is the primary data format. All of our science packages read CDF files directly.

8. Experience

Once a set of IDL library functions were developed, accessing the data and its related metadata is rather trivial. Though IDL's support of CDF is limited, it does have the necessary elements. One particularly important feature of the CDF format is the capability of storing variables of different length (different time resolutions) in the same file (Z variables).

9. Desired Functionality

It would be nice to be able to cross reference time tags and pointer location to read only a subset of long data files.

10. Selection Criteria

How widely the format is supported by different languages. Will I be limited in delopment languages? Promise of long term support. Data production is for long term usage. I do not want the format to become obsolete before the data itself. Format functionality is considered only if the first ywo conditions are satidfied.

11. Impact on Research

The ISTP CDF format alloed us to cross-link data from different instruments and spacecraft with one development effort. Very significant. Contra example is the ACE choice of HDF. We will have to go through all of our library to include HDF functionality if we want to include ACE in our multi-spacecraft studies.

12. Other Comments

Wider Views