• Well documented:Complete and up-to-date Fortran-90 Users Guide
• Overloaded functions and optional arguments: simpler API. For example, one nf90_put_var() function replaces thirty nf_put_var() functions in the Fortran-77 interface and forty nc_put_var() functions in the C interface.
• Fewer function arguments: string lengths need not be passed for attribute strings, and array lengths need not be passed for dimension arrays.
• Improved error checking: use of INTENT declarations lets compilers check whether some arguments are used correctly.
• Array sections supported: simplifies programming

• Support for netCDF-4 user-defined compound types not portable, requires Fortran-2003
• Column-major subscript order (1st dimension varies fastest) reversed from CDL row-major order
• No ncgen support: ncgen cannot generate Fortran-90 code (yet), though Fortran-77 code ncgen3 generates works from Fortran-90
• You have to explicitly provide memory space for any netCDF data values and attribute values you read.
• Status of every function call must be explicitly checked

• Library implemented in Fortran-90 as a thin layer on top of the Fortran-77 library, which in turn is a thin layer on top of the C library
• C, C++, and Fortran netCDF libraries are separate software distributions since netCDF-C version 4.2

2012 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Introduction to the NetCDF APIs