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The Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) has been in existence since the 1980's. Over the years, HDF has been chosen as the format of choice for a number of large programs. One of these programs, NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), chose to further specialize the format, creating what is now known as HDF-EOS. In addition to these large, typically government programs, a number of commercial data visualization, manipulation, and analysis packages support the format, indicating a level of acceptance by data users.
While not originally intended as a format for long-term data preservation, NASA's EOS program uses HDF not only as a data distribution, access and manipulation format but also as the active archive format for the data. Furthermore, the NPOESS progam is currently considering HDF/HDF-EOS as their archive format. However, formats designed to facilitate data access and analysis are not necessarily well suited to long-term data preservation. This presentation will discuss some of the considerations driving the choice of an archive format, assess the HDF and HDF-EOS formats in terms of these considerations, and discuss implications of the choice of HDF/HDF-EOS as an archive format for archives responsible for preserving data and providing data access into the distant future.
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