What is the connection between netCDF and HDF?
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) developed HDF and makes it freely available. HDF is a data model and extensible data format for self-describing files that was developed independently of netCDF. HDF supports both C and Fortran interfaces, and it has been successfully ported to a wide variety of machine architectures and operating systems. HDF emphasizes a single common format for data, on which many interfaces can be built. NCSA implemented software that provides a netCDF interface to HDF version 4. With this software, it was possible to use the netCDF calling interface to place data into an HDF4 file. HDF5 provides a richer data model, with emphasis on efficiency of access, parallel I/O, and support for high-performance computing. The netCDF-4 project is implementing an enhanced netCDF interface on the HDF5 storage layer to preserve the desirable common characteristics of netCDF and HDF5 while taking advantage of their separate strengths: the widespread use a
