Re: HDF, netCDF, etc question

[Aaron Birenboim <aaron(at)shimi.swcp.com>]

Randall Skelton <rhskelto@atm.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
: I suggest the use of an SQL database :-)

Frankly, I agree.

I have used many formats, including a customer that
demanded a customized HDF based representation.

All a big mess.

I highly recommend storing all your meta-data in an SQL database.
If you do not want to use BLOB's, store path names to the raw binary data.
Store data type, size, etc in the DB.

HDF is very flexible.  So flexible that its not very useful
as a standard.  In fact, we implemented on HDF 4, then HDF 5 came out,
and its not backward compatible.  So this major customer
is sitting on top of TONS of data stored in an OBSOLETE format.
-- 
Aaron Birenboim
Albuquerque, NM
aaron@boim.com
http://boim.com/~aaron