What is Common Data Format (CDF)?

The Common Data Format (CDF) is a conceptual data abstraction for storing, manipulating, and accessing multidimensional datasets. The basic component of CDF is a software programming interface that is a device- independent view of the CDF data model. The application developer is insulated from the actual physical file format for reasons of conceptual simplicity, device independence, and future expandability. CDF files created on any given platform can be transported to any other platform onto which CDF is ported and used with any CDF tools or layered applications.

The CDF software, documentation, and user support services are provided by NASA and available to the public free of charge. There are no license agreements or costs involved in obtaining or using CDF.

CDF Features

• Self-Describing: Contains embedded metadata for context and semantics.
• Platform and Discipline Independent: Supports data from various disciplines and platforms.
• Compression Support: Includes built-in support for data compression (RLE, gZip, Huffman).
• Transparent Access: Provides an Application Programming Interface (API) for seamless access to data and metadata.
• Wide Software Support: Supported by various commercial and open-source data analysis and visualization software, including IDL, MATLAB, and Python libraries like CDFlib and SpacePy.
• Efficiency in Data Handling: The CDF library helps manage and manipulate multi-dimensional data arrays efficiently.
• Archivable: Access to all earlier forms of CDF data will be supported by current and future versions of the software. Also exportable as CDF Markup Language (CDFML) XML format.

We encourage all to subscribe to the CDF Announcements Mailing List to receive warnings of future leap seconds and other CDF issues (send an email to Leave the mailing list to unsubscribe). As always, please report any problems, issues, or questions to CDF_Support.