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Filter support has three goals: 1. Use the existing HDF5 filter implementations, 2. Allow filter metadata to be stored in the NumCodecs metadata format used by Zarr, 3. Allow filters to be used even when HDF5 is disabled Detailed usage directions are define in docs/filters.md. For now, the existing filter API is left in place. So filters are defined using ''nc_def_var_filter'' using the HDF5 style where the id and parameters are unsigned integers. This is a big change since filters affect many parts of the code. In the following, the terms "compressor" and "filter" and "codec" are generally used synonomously. ### Filter-Related Changes: * In order to support dynamic loading of shared filter libraries, a new library was added in the libncpoco directory; it helps to isolate dynamic loading across multiple platforms. * Provide a json parsing library for use by plugins; this is created by merging libdispatch/ncjson.c with include/ncjson.h. * Add a new _Codecs attribute to allow clients to see what codecs are being used; let ncdump -s print it out. * Provide special headers to help support compilation of HDF5 filters when HDF5 is not enabled: netcdf_filter_hdf5_build.h and netcdf_filter_build.h. * Add a number of new test to test the new nczarr filters. * Let ncgen parse _Codecs attribute, although it is ignored. ### Plugin directory changes: * Add support for the Blosc compressor; this is essential because it is the most common compressor used in Zarr datasets. This also necessitated adding a CMake FindBlosc.cmake file * Add NCZarr support for the big-four filters provided by HDF5: shuffle, fletcher32, deflate (zlib), and szip * Add a Codec defaulter (see docs/filters.md) for the big four filters. * Make plugins work with windows by properly adding __declspec declaration. ### Misc. Non-Filter Changes * Replace most uses of USE_NETCDF4 (deprecated) with USE_HDF5. * Improve support for caching * More fixes for path conversion code * Fix misc. memory leaks * Add new utility -- ncdump/ncpathcvt -- that does more or less the same thing as cygpath. * Add a number of new test to test the non-filter fixes. * Update the parsers * Convert most instances of '#ifdef _MSC_VER' to '#ifdef _WIN32'
Unidata NetCDF
About
The Unidata network Common Data Form (netCDF) is an interface for scientific data access and a freely-distributed software library that provides an implementation of the interface. The netCDF library also defines a machine-independent format for representing scientific data. Together, the interface, library, and format support the creation, access, and sharing of scientific data. The current netCDF software provides C interfaces for applications and data. Separate software distributions available from Unidata provide Java, Fortran, Python, and C++ interfaces. They have been tested on various common platforms.
Properties
NetCDF files are self-describing, network-transparent, directly
accessible, and extendible. Self-describing means that a netCDF file
includes information about the data it contains. Network-transparent
means that 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 means that a small subset of a
large dataset may be accessed efficiently, without first reading through
all the preceding data. Extendible means that data can be appended to
a netCDF dataset without copying it or redefining its structure.
Use
NetCDF is useful for supporting access to diverse kinds of scientific data in heterogeneous networking environments and for writing application software that does not depend on application-specific formats. For information about a variety of analysis and display packages that have been developed to analyze and display data in netCDF form, see
More information
For more information about netCDF, see
Latest releases
You can obtain a copy of the latest released version of netCDF software for various languages:
- C library and utilities
- Fortran
- [Java](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf-java/
- Python
- C++
Copyright
Copyright and licensing information can be found here, as well as in the COPYRIGHT file accompanying the software
Installation
To install the netCDF-C software, please see the file INSTALL in the netCDF-C distribution, or the (usually more up-to-date) document:
Documentation
A language-independent User's Guide for netCDF, and some other language-specific user-level documents are available from:
- Language-independent User's Guide
- NetCDF-C Tutorial
- Fortran-90 User's Guide
- Fortran-77 User's Guide
- netCDF-Java/Common Data Model library
- netCDF4-python
A mailing list, netcdfgroup@unidata.ucar.edu, exists for discussion of the netCDF interface and announcements about netCDF bugs, fixes, and enhancements. For information about how to subscribe, see the URL
Feedback
We appreciate feedback from users of this package. Please send comments, suggestions, and bug reports to support-netcdf@unidata.ucar.edu.