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>Organization: . >Keywords: 199503140527.AA11375 Hi Hirokazu, > I am currently conducting a survey about data formats that are currently > used for domestic and international scientific data exchange. > For this survey, I would like to collect some basic information about > netCDF such as ; > > 1. Major users (organization) To see some of the users for netCDF, you can use a WWW browser (such as Netscape or Mosaic) to look at the netCDF homepage: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/ where there are links to "Who uses netCDF?" and information about "Mailing Lists". If you don't have a WWW browser, you can get copies of text versions of these files via anonymous FTP from: ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/usage.txt and ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/mailing-lists.txt If you have no access to text files via anonymous FTP, let us know and we will email copies of the above documents. To get a list of all the email addresses on the netCDF mailing lists, from which you can get an idea of the organizations and countries where netCDF is used, send an email message to address@hidden with a blank subject and containing the following two lines as the message: who netcdfgroup who ncdigest > 2. Major usage I'm not sure what you're asking for here, but there is information about how netCDF is used in the "usage" document referred to above. > 3. Basic features netCDF data is: + Self-Describing: A netCDF file includes information about the data it contains. + Network-transparent. A netCDF file is represented in a form that can be accessed by computers with different ways of storing integers, characters, and floating-point numbers. + Direct-access. A small subset of a large dataset may be accessed efficiently, without first reading through all the preceding data. + Appendable. Data can be appended to a netCDF dataset along one dimension without copying the dataset or redefining its structure. The structure of a netCDF dataset can be changed, though this sometimes causes the dataset to be copied. + Sharable. One writer and multiple readers may simultaneously access the same netCDF file. > 4. Merits and demerits To see a comparison with other scientific data access software, see the article: Brown, S. A, M. Folk, G. Goucher, and R. Rew, "Software for Portable Scientific Data Management," Computers in Physics, American Institute of Physics, Vol. 7, No. 3, May/June 1993, pp. 304-308. Also, there is some information comparing the various packages available in the "Scientific Data Formats FAQ" document, viewable with a WWW browser from http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/traffic/scidataformats/faq.html or in ASCII text form via anonymous FTP from ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/sci-data-formats The advantages and disadvantages of netCDF is a complex subject, since the netCDF data model, interface, software, and format reflect subtle trade-offs between usability, generality, understandability, maintainability, and efficiency in size and CPU time. For example, one advantage of netCDF is the unlimited dimension it provides, which makes it possible to append data to existing netCDF datasets. One of the disadvantages of netCDF is that it has only one unlimited dimension per dataset, but this limitation is intentional since it permits a straightforward and efficient implementation. There are dozens of other similar tradeoffs, and some are irrelevant for many applications, while others may be of crucial importance in deciding among available packages for a specific use. ______________________________________________________________________________ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden P.O. Box 3000 http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/ Boulder, CO 80307-3000 ______________________________________________________________________________