Introduction

Overview

Teaching: 0 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• Where to start?

• Why using common data formats?

Objectives

• Background on the rise of common data formats in our scientific disciplines

Before using “standard” data formats, each project often invented their own data formats, raw binary or even ASCII. These approaches had a number of problems:

• Machine dependent byte ordering endianess or floating point representations

• Required a detailed documentation to be able to read the right data in a file

• A new custom reader/writer is needed for each different data organization making difficult to collaborate between organizations.

• Upgrading a program working in a new programming language could be very difficult since you have to redevelop the reader from scratch.

Key Points

• Data formats to exchange, archive and disseminate scientific results