National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive

About the Common Data Format...

The Common Data Format (CDF) is a self-describing data abstraction for the storage and manipulation of multidimensional data in a platform- and discipline-independent fashion. When one first hears the term "Common Data Format" one intuitively thinks of data formats in the traditional (i.e., messy/convoluted storage of data on disk or tape) sense of the word. Although CDF has its own internal self-describing format, it consists of more than just a data format.

CDF is a scientific data management package (known as the "CDF Library") which allows programmers and application developers to manage and manipulate scalar, vector, and multi-dimensional data arrays. The irony of the term "FORMAT" is that the actual data format which CDF utilizes is completely transparent to the user and accessible through a consistent set of interface (known as the "CDF Interface") routines. Therefore, programmers are not burdened with performing low level I/O to physically format and unformat the data file. This is all done for them.

The development of CDF arose out of the recognition by the NSSDCA for a class of data models that is matched to the structure of scientific data and the applications (i.e. statistical and numerical methods, visualization, and management) they serve.

Access to CDF software and documentation is available via anonymous FTP. Below is a listing of the various platforms and operating systems supported by CDF:

  • DEC Alpha/OSF1 & OpenVMS
  • DECstation/ULTRIX & VMS
  • HP 9000 series/HP-UX
  • PC MS-DOS/Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, Linux, Solaris, Cygwin, & QNX
  • IBM RS600 series/AIX
  • Macintosh OS 8/9/X
  • NeXT/Mach
  • SGI Iris, Power series and Indigo/IRIX
  • Sun/SunOS & SOLARIS
  • VAX/VMS
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