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NetCDF is a data abstraction for scientific data access and a software library that provides a concrete implementation of the interfaces that support that abstraction. The implementation provides a machine-independent format for representing scientific data. Although the netCDF file format is completely hidden below the interfaces, some understanding of the implementation and associated file structure may help to make clear which netCDF operations are expensive and why.
A detailed description of the netCDF format is not appropriate for this User's Guide, however. It is not needed to read and write netCDF files or understand efficiency issues. Programs that use only the documented interfaces and that make no other assumptions about the format will continue to work even if the netCDF format is changed in the future, because any such change will be made below the documented interfaces and will support earlier versions of netCDF data.
This chapter describes the structure of a netCDF file and some characteristics of the XDR layer that provides network transparency in enough detail to understand netCDF performance issues.
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