OPeNDAP

OPeNDAP is a data transport architecture widely used by earth scientists. The current specification is [http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/dods/design/dap-rfc-html/ OPeNDAP 2.0 draft]. OPeNDAP includes standards for encapsulating structured data, annotating the data with attributes and adding semantics that describe the data. The protocol is maintained by [http://opendap.org/ OPeNDAP.org], a publicly-funded non-profit organization that also provides free reference implementations of OPeNDAP servers and clients.

OPeNDAP works by creating a document called a DDS, that describes the structure of a data file (or database), and optionally a DAS which assigns attributes to the fields described in the DDS. With these files in place an OPeNDAP server can serve an arbitrarily large collection of data. Data on the server is often in HDF or NetCDF format, but can be in any format including a user-defined format.

OPeNDAP is widely used by governmental agencies such as NASA and NOAA to serve satellite, weather and other observed earth science data.

=External links=

*[http://opendap.org/ OPeNDAP.org] *[http://grads.iges.org/grads/grads.html GrADS] *[http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/Ferret/ Ferret] *[http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data/portals/dods/ NASA GCMD OPeNDAP portal] *[http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/ Asia-Pacific Data Research Center -- a textbook example OPenDAP implementation]