3 Further analysis

This guide is about forming a DODS URL. After you have figured out how to request the data, there are a variety of things you can do with it. (DODS software mentioned here is available from the OPeNDAP Home page.)

• Use a generic web client like geturl (a standard part of the DODS package), the free programs wget or lynx, or even a browser like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer to download data into a local data file. To be able to use the data further, you will probably have to download the ASCII version by using the   .asc suffix on the URL, as in the examples shown.
• There are pre-packaged DODS clients available that can download binary DODS data from the web into a useful form. As of July 14, 2004, command line clients (loaddods) are available for the Matlab and IDL data analysis environments, with which you can download DODS data directly into IDL or Matlab objects.  
• The Ferret  and GrADS free data analysis packages both support DODS. You can use these for downloading DODS data, and for examining it afterwards. (There are limitations. As of July 14, 2004, Ferret can not read datasets served as Sequence data.)
• The Matlab analysis package also supports a DODS client attached to a graphical user interface. You can use the GUI to create a constrained DODS URL, and download the data directly into Matlab. The The OPeNDAP Matlab GUI contains more information about the Matlab GUI client. 
• If you have a data analysis program or package that you like, you can look into the possibility of linking that package to the DODS toolkit library, in effect making your program into a web-capable DODS client.   DODS!libraries exist to mimic the behavior of the NetCDFand JGOFS data access APIs. If your program already uses one of these APIs, getting it to run with DODS may be as simple as changing the libraries to which you link it. The The OPeNDAP User Guide describes how to do this, and the The DODS Toolkit Programmer's Guide describes how you can use the DODS toolkit directly to create a new application that doesn't use one of the established data access APIs. 

The use of these clients, like the ways in which you can analyze the data you find, is beyond the scope of this (or any) book. Enjoy.