Netcdf-Java Common Data Model

NetCDF-Java version 2.2 provides an Application Programmer Interface (API) for a scientific data model called the */Common Data Model (CDM)/*. The CDM is the result of merging the NetCDF (version 3), OpenDAP (version 2), and the HDF5 (version 1.6) data models. The Common Data Model has several layers, which build on top of each other to add successively richer semantics:

• The */data layer/*, also known as the */syntactic layer,/* handles data reading and writing. The base data type for this layer is the multidimensional array.
• The */standard attribute layer/* knows about some of the meanings that humans associate with scientific data: units, missing data values, coordinate systems, data topology, etc. This layer provides standard methods for common tasks in order to make the application programmer's task easier.
• The */coordinate system/* layer identifies the coordinates of the data arrays. Coordinates are a completely general concept for scientific data; we also identify specialized */georeferencing coordinate systems/*, which are important to the Earth Science community.
• The */scientific data type/* layer identifies specific types of data, such as /grids/, /images/, and /point data/.

Currently we are supporting NetCDF, HDF5, OpenDAP, Grib1 and Grib2. Other formats and access protocols, including McIdas ADDE, are being considered. This is work in progress, but an alpha release of the software and documention will be available by October.

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Last modified: 06/02/2017