Russ (and Steve and Glenn) -- I figured that I would rather get this code out to people and make changes/bug-fixes at the same time as the integration with 3.4. There is also some functionality overlap that would have to be resolved (i.e. the buffering of decompressed blocks of data). I really haven't had the time to look at the code in depth. I will add some performance numbers to the z_netcdf link later today. --Bill