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The Network Common Data Form, or netCDF, is an interface to a library of data access programs for storing and retrieving scientific data. NetCDF is an abstraction that supports a view of data as a collection of self-describing, network-transparent objects that can be accessed through a simple interface. Collections of named multidimensional variables can be randomly accessed, without knowing details of how the data are stored. Auxiliary information about the data, such as what units are used, can be stored with the data. Generic utilities and application programs can be written that access arbitrary netCDF files and transform, combine, analyze, or display specified fields of the data. The development of such applications may lead to improved accessibility of data and improved reusability of software for scientific data management, analysis, and display.
The netCDF software implements an abstract data type, which means that all operations to access and manipulate data in a netCDF file must use only the set of functions provided by the interface. The actual representation of the data is hidden from applications that use the interface, so that how the data are stored could be changed without affecting such programs. The physical representation of netCDF data is designed to be independent of the computer on which the data were written. Future changes to the netCDF interface will be compatible with the interface described here, so that neither existing netCDF files nor programs accessing them will require modification.
The netCDF interface is supported for both C and FORTRAN, and for UNIX, VMS, OS/2 and MSDOS operating systems. The netCDF software that implements this interface is freely available via FTP and free of licensing restrictions to encourage its wide use.
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