What NetCDF is?

NetCDF [1] (Network Common Data Format) is an abstract format designed for multidimensional arrays in the Unidata Program Center in Builder. This format is commonly used in scientific areas, it allows scalar, vector and raster (regular and irregular meshes) data representation. The NetCDF classic model consists on variables, dimensions and attributes, all of them being the components of a Dtaset.

The variables are n-dimensional vectors and these can be of 6 basic types: char, byte, short, int, float and double (albeit from the other types are added v4.0: unsigned int types, strings, compound types, variable length arrays, enums, and opaque). Variables have a name, data type, and a shape described by its list of dimensions. Each dimension has a name and a length, and can be used to represent a real physical dimension such as time, length, latitude or height.

Scalar attributes are used to store metadata and are identified by their name or ID of the variable they represent.

This data is stored on disk in the format "file.nc" [2] _, which once they are opened in gvSIG give us access to both variables and attributes.

NetCDF features in gvSIG?

gvSIG uses the Java NetCDF library [3] _ to provide access to NetCDF file type. Currently the latest stable version published of this library is version 4.2 and this is the one included in the first version of the NetCDF extension to gvSIG 2.0.

Through this library gvSIG is able to show a NetCDF layer in a geographical view and check its variables and attributes through the properties of the layer.