Consider again the set of data files shown in Section 7.1. We could associate each one of these files with a date, and this would provide the rudiments of a file server if we then serve that data with an OPeNDAP server such as the OPeNDAP FreeForm ND Data Handler.
1997/360 http://opendap/dap/data/1997360.nc 1997/361 http://opendap/dap/data/1997361.nc 1997/362 http://opendap/dap/data/1997362.nc 1997/363 http://opendap/dap/data/1997363.nc 1997/364 http://opendap/dap/data/1997364.nc 1997/365 http://opendap/dap/data/1997365.nc 1998/001 http://opendap/dap/data/1998001.nc 1998/002 http://opendap/dap/data/1998002.nc 1998/003 http://opendap/dap/data/1998003.nc 1998/004 http://opendap/dap/data/1998004.nc 1998/005 http://opendap/dap/data/1998005.nc 1998/006 http://opendap/dap/data/1998006.nc 1998/007 http://opendap/dap/data/1998007.nc 1998/008 http://opendap/dap/data/1998008.nc 1998/009 http://opendap/dap/data/1998009.nc 1998/010 http://opendap/dap/data/1998010.nc
This list represents a set of DAP URLs, each identified by a date, given as a year and a serial day. The files appear to be netCDF format files, served by an OPeNDAP netCDF server, but that is not important for this discussion.
To use the OPeNDAP FreeForm ND Data Handler for your file server, you could use a format description file with an input section like this:
ASCII_input_data "File Server Example Input" year 1 4 short 0 serial_day 6 8 short 0 DODS_Url 10 46 char 0