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Common Data Format (CDF)

The Common Data Format (CDF) is a self-describing data format for the storage and manipulation of scalar and multidimensional data in a platform- and discipline-independent fashion. When one first hears the term "Common Data Format" one intuitively thinks of data formats in the traditional (i.e. messy/convoluted storage of data on disk or tape) sense of the word. Although CDF has its own internal self describing format, it consists of more than just a data format. CDF is a scientific data management package (known as the "CDF Library") which allows programmers and application developers to manage and manipulate scalar, vector, and multi-dimensional data arrays. The irony of the term "FORMAT" is that the actual data format which CDF utilizes is completely transparent to the user and accessible through a consistent set of interface (known as the "CDF Interface") routines. Therefore, programmers are not burdened with performing low level I/O's to physically format and unformat the data file. This is all done for them automatically.

Please send an email to cdfsupport@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov for any CDF related questions (both technical and policy related).

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Announcements

• To view and download the latest CDF release V3.3.0.
• 07/13/2010: The CDF V3.3.1 is beta-released.
• 07/08/2009: CDF supports C# programming language on Windows. APIs for C#-CDF are now released and available here. Some bugs in the previous beta release were fixed.
• MATLAB: Latest CDF Patch for MATLAB built with the V3.3.1
• IDL: Latest CDF Patch for IDL 6 and 7 (strongly recommended) built with the V3.3.1
• CDF's Java Network Launching Protocol latest development

Introductory Information about CDF

• CDF copyright statement
• CDF Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
• Conversion of non-CDF files to CDF and vice versa
• XML - CDF Markup Language (CDFML), CDFML DTD and Schema, and CDFML tools
• Examples of CDF Applications

Value Added Service

• Data Translation Web Service Information
• Data Translation Web Service (DTWS) client - interactive data format translation service

Space Physics Users of CDF

• To make ISTP compliant CDFs look at Space Physics Use of CDF
• Public Domain and Commercial Software for CDF

Obtaining CDF software and documentation

User-supplied Software

Utilities listed below are written and donated by CDF users. Software is provided as is without any implied warranties whatsoever.

Sybase-to-CDF

This Perl script is written by the Gravity Probe B team at the Stanford University, and it extracts data from a Sybase database to CDF format using the Perl DBI and CDF Perl modules.

Speedups for reading CDF files in MATLAB

This patch (donated by Dr. Robert Weigel at GMU) reads all the CDF records at once, and it's significantly faster than the MATLAB's CDFREAD function.

MySQL-to-CDF

This Perl script is written by Dr. Joshua Shaffer at the Drexel University. It enumerates all the attributes in a given relation, creates the corresponding CDF structure, and dumps the MySQL data into the CDF file. It uses Perl DBI, but it can be adapted to work with other DBD drivers.