2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Overview of netCDF
3.1 What is netCDF, really?
In the real world, things are more complicated.
NetCDF evolves to keep up with needs of its users, and is actually:
- Two data models
- classic model (netCDF-1, netCDF-2, netCDF-3)
- enhanced model (netCDF-4)
- Two formats with variants
- classic format and 64-bit offset variant for large files
- netCDF-4 (HDF5-based) format and classic model variant
- Two independent flavors of APIs
- C-based interfaces (C, C++, Fortran-77, Fortran-90, Perl, Python, Ruby, Matlab, ...)
- Java interface
You mostly don't need to be aware of these complications,
because new versions of netCDF software support
- all previous netCDF data models
- all previous netCDF formats and their variants
- all previous APIs
Also, files written through one language API are readable through
other language APIs.
2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Overview of netCDF