The document discusses efforts to make HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) more user-friendly and to support NASA's requirements through improved services and testing. It describes various HDF utilities, such as hdiff, hrepack, h5diff, and others, that facilitate file comparison and management. Acknowledgments are given for NASA grants and other support, with links for more information and assistance provided.

1. Making HDF Easier to Use:
HDF Tools from NCSA
Pedro Nunes, Robert E. McGrath, Mike Folk
National Center for Supercomputing
Applications
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

2. Goals
• Make HDF easier to use
• Support NASA requirements

3. Impacts
• New and improved services at NASA
DAACs* and SIPs
• Improved testing and QA at NCSA
• Wider use of compression and other
advanced features
1* E.g.,
C. C. Lynnes, S. Berrick, A. Gopalan, X. Hua, S. Shen, P. Smith, K-Y.
Yang, K. Wheeler, C. Curry, “Application of Bayesian
Classification to Content-based Data Management”, Earth Science
Technology Conference 2004, Palo Alto, June 22-24, 2004.
http://www.esto.nasa.gov/conferences/estc2004/papers/b8p4.pdf.

4. HDF4 Utilities: hdiff and hrepack
hdiff -- command line tool that compares two
HDF4 files and reports differences between
them.
hrepack -- command line tool that performs a
logical copy of an input HDF4 file to an
output HDF4 file.

5. HDF5 Utilities
h5diff – command line tool that compares two HDF5 files
and reports differences between them.
h5repack -- command line tool that performs a logical copy
of an input HDF5 file to an output HDF5 file.
h5dump – new options to display more information about
objects in the file, including
• Compression and other storage parameters
• Stored size of the data.
h5jam – new utility to add, remove user block to HDF5 file

6. Acknowledgements
NASA grants NAG 5-2040 and NCC5-599. Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
Other support provided by NCSA and other sponsors and
agencies.

7. For more information
Information and Download from NCSA:
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu
HDF Help Desk: hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu