OPeNDAP was originally developed by and designed for oceanographers, but today the protocol is applied across many diverse domains in which large, complex, distributed datasets are used.
In a nutshell, OPeNDAP allows end users to immediately access specific subsets of data in a form they can easily use—all while using their preferred data analysis applications.
Photo by NASA
OPeNDAP utilizes a client/server model:
The OPeNDAP team supports our own modular data server called Hyrax, which was developed with funding from NSF, NASA, and NOAA and is freely available for anyone to use.
OPeNDAP serves as a “translator” for a wide variety of data formats and types. All that’s required is for the data provider and the end user to both have an OPeNDAP server (such as Hyrax set up); our protocol handles the rest.
And for especially complex needs, developers can build custom servers by modifying our open source code.
Thanks to the DAP, the end user can inspect datasets remotely through a web URL or a number of data tools.
They can also perform subsetting operations to download only the specific pieces they want—eliminating massive file transfers and the related costs.
OPeNDAP serves data in a format that works well with most end users’ preferred data analysis applications (e.g. R, Python, MATLAB, and other applications using NetCDF libraries).
This makes it easier for researchers, scientists, and other end users to leverage data in their work.