HDF and HDF-EOS Tools George Schwenke Raytheon STX schwenke@rattler.gsfc.nasa.gov

Development of tools useful for HDF-EOS has been slow... Many tools currently exist for visualization and manipulation of HDF files Development of tools useful for HDF-EOS has been slow... The limited availability of actual HDF-EOS data has been one significant factor delaying tools development... HDF-EOS Data S Sampler 1

A Necessary Distinction: Utility - typically runs from the command line and performs a specific data manipulation function examples: make24 ristosds Convert Raster Image Sets to Scientific Data Sets hdfls List contents of an HDF file (tags and reference numbers)

Tool - a complete application performing significant data manipulation and processing functions examples: The NCSA Java-based HDF Viewer (JHV) - A Java-based implementation of an HDF Viewer. DIAL (Data Information and Access Link) from ESDIS - browsing, plotting, subsampling and subsetting of HDF and HDF-EOS data. HDF Browser from Fortner Software - allows access to data stored in HDF formatted files HDF Reference http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/tools.html

Three categories of HDF-EOS Tools ESDIS Project Tools Other “Government” Tools Commercial Tools

ESDIS Project Tools DIAL - Data and Information Access Link Capable of searching browsing downloading viewing subsampling subsetting HDF and HDF-EOS Data

ESDIS Project Tools EOSView (new version 3.0 released Aug 98) Demonstrated during 1st day of Workshop Many data searching, manipulation and display functions (like DIAL), doesn’t have the capability to act as a data server

“Government” Tools View_hdf (from LaRC) HDF only; uses IDL WebWinds from JPL plus a wealth of work for HDF from NCSA, including JHV

Government Tools (continued): HDF-EOS DataBlade (developed by ECOlogic) Extends capabilities of Informix Data Base to HDF-EOS data

Commercial Tools Noesys (Fortner Software LLC) HDF Explorer (Mind)

Commercial Tools ENVI/IDL - Environment for Visualizing Images (RSI) IDL 5.2 has full support for HDF-EOS; ENVI will follow MATLAB - Version 5.3 supports HDF-EOS

Summary of response to the HDF-EOS Tools Survey 16 responses -- 5 gov; 4 edu; 7 com All but 1 are “developing HDF-EOS tools” Most “don’t know” when they’ll be ready... Tools to be developed… Java JNI Interface display tools Java compatable ODBMS ASCII to HDF-EOS METADATA tools for granule level support map/graphical overlay tools browser/editor for sgi, linux access and analysis

Summary Most utilities and tools currently exist for only HDF Development of HDF-EOS capable tools has been slow! ESDIS Project sponsorship helps, but can not be the only player The future volumes of data in HDF-EOS format will justify expense of HDF-EOS software for forward- looking software developers