CDF History

The Common Data Format (CDF) is a self-describing scientific data file format and management software package based on a multidimensional (array) model and metadata attributes for dataset, file, and variable descriptions. It was designed and developed in 1982 as part of the Pilot Climate Data System (PCDS), and then generalized in 1985 by the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA/GSFC. The CDF software library was originally written in FORTRAN and only available on the VAX/VMS environments, and later rewritten in C (CDF 2.0) and ported to most computer platforms. With little or no impact on performance, the redesign provided for an open framework that could be easily extended to incorporate new functionality and features when needed. The CDF format and software are currently at Version 3.x, and performance and features have been enhanced significantly.

The three main requirements driving its development were to facilitate ingestion of data sets and data products into CDF, enable standard common terminology (metadata) to describe the data sets, and develop dataset-independent higher-level applications (e.g., NSSDC Graphics System [NGS] and later CDAWeb). CDF, in its most basic terms, is a conceptual data abstraction for storing, manipulating, and accessing multidimensional data sets, and is based on a flexible internal file format with compression and checksumming for data integrity. The data abstraction allows future extensibility and provides for conceptual simplicity while isolating machine and device dependence. CDF supports both host encoding and the machine-independent (XDR) encoding.

Some references https://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/software/cdf/doc/papers/Bibliography.html

Goucher, G. W., and G. J. Mathews, “A Comprehensive Look at CDF,” NSSDC/WDC-A-R&S 94-07, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, August 1994.

S. Brown, M. Folk, G. Goucher, and R. Rew, “Software for Portable Scientific Data Management,” Computers in Physics, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 304-308, May/June 1993.

Treinish, L. A. (ed.), “Data Structures and Access Software for Scientific Visualization,” A Report on a Workshop at SIGGRAPH ‘90, Computer Graphics, 25, No. 2, April 1991. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/949845.949910

Treinish, L. A., and G. W. Goucher, “A Data Abstraction for the Source-Independent Storage and Manipulation of Data,” National Space Science Data Center Technical Paper, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, August 1988.

Treinish, L. A., and M. L. Gough, “A Software Package for the Data-Independent Storage of Multi-Dimensional Data,” EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 68, pp. 633-635, 1987. https://doi.org/10.1029/EO068i028p00633

Lloyd A. Treinish, NSSDC releases version 1.0 of the NSSDC Graphics System (NGS), EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Volume: 68, Issue: 47, Page: 1609-1610, 24 November 1987, https://doi.org/10.1029/EO068i047p01609-03

IDL Scientific Data Formats, Version 3.6, Research Systems Incorporated, Boulder, Colorado, April 1994.

Lloyd Treinish, Ravi Kulkarni, Mike Folk, Greg Goucher, “Data models, structures and access software for scientific visualization”, January 1993 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/949845.949910