Why OPeNDAP?

Over the past 30 years, our partnerships with NASA and NOAA have enabled OPeNDAP to pioneer innovative methods for delivering high-performance access to NetCDF and HDF data files through our Hyrax Data Server—whether data is hosted on the cloud or traditional spinning disks.

Hyrax Data Server

Interoperability with OPeNDAP

Data Access

Photo by NASA

The DAP4 Protocol: Well-Suited for Complex Scientific Datasets

The DAP4 protocol is discipline-neutral and supports a rich set of data types, enabling the exchange of a wide range of scientific data, including:

Structured Data
Multidimensional Arrays
Time Series Data
Satellite Imagery
Remote Sensing Data
Model Output Data

Want to see OPeNDAP in Action?

Check out our Data Access Tutorials!

Benefits for Those Accessing & Manipulating Data

Widely Adopted

The OPeNDAP protocol has been implemented by hundreds of data providers and is a NASA community standard.

Domain Neutral

OPeNDAP is deliberately domain neutral, making it easier to collaborate across scientific, research, and other disciplines.

Multiple Data Types

OPeNDAP allows access and manipulation of structured data, gridded data, multidimensional arrays, time series data, remote sensing data, and more.

Remote Inspection & Subsetting

OPeNDAP allows you to request and retrieve only the subset of data you need—eliminating massive or even size-prohibitive data downloads.

Multiple File Formats

OPeNDAP can serve and access data in multiple formats (such as NetCDF and HDF), so you don’t have to worry about conversions or formatting.

Streamlined Workflows

OPeNDAP works with the tools you already use, such as MATLAB, IDL, R, Panoply, and Python libraries like Pydap, netCDF4, and Xarray.

Benefits for Those Managing & Providing Data

Reduced Costs

By allowing users to request and retrieve specific subsets of data, OPeNDAP reduces the need for massive data transfers and reduces the costs of data storage and bandwidth.

Integration with Data Tools

OPeNDAP works with the tools and libraries that end users (especially those in the Earth sciences) are already utilizing: Python, R, MATLAB, IDL, Ferret, and more.

Broad Compatibility

OPeNDAP supports a wide range of data formats and types, making it a versatile choice and “one-stop shop” for serving diverse datasets.

Legacy Data Interoperability

OPeNDAP servers can accept multiple types of data inputs and present multiple views of them—taking in early HDF, for example, and serving them as netCDF4, XML, HTML, and more.

Customizability

Because the OPeNDAP protocol is open-source, developers can customize or extend it to fit your operational requirements and data specifications.

Discoverability

OPeNDAP’s standardized metadata and data structuring guidelines make datasets more discoverable and accessible, simplifying data sharing and collaboration.

EXPLORE DATA PROVIDER USE CASES

EXPLORE DATA MANAGER USE CASES

Testimonials

“As part of my work in aerial remote sensing, I incorporate the NASA EarthData Ozone data product to understand atmospheric conditions during one of our calibration flights. I use the OPeNDAP data subsetter to extract the data needed only in the area of our survey, and it conveniently offers the option for outputting into several different data formats.

This tool is highly effective for extracting gridded NASA data in an area of interest—without such a tool, there would be considerable overhead for downloading and converting the data. This speeds up our process considerably!”

Bridget Hass , Remote Sensing Data Scientist

“OPeNDAP helps me to quickly access and analyze ocean and climate data from servers across the world without the need to first transfer the data to my local server. This is especially convenient when I’m on conference travel with only my laptop and would like to look at data that is remotely stored.

One of the data visualization and analysis programs I often use is FERRET, developed by NOAA PMEL, which works seamlessly with OPeNDAP. A data server I frequently access via OPeNDAP is the Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center (APDRC) at IPRC, which hosts many of the oceanic and atmospheric data sets that are critical for my research.”

Malte F. Stuecker , Assistant Professor, Department of Oceanography and International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), University of Hawaii at Manoa

“As a developer, I’m a long time fan of OPeNDAP. For more than 10 years, I’ve used OPeNDAP to get data in a standard, no-fuss, easily scriptable way.

Generally speaking, I’m trying to get a data subset with just the variables I need, translated into NetCDF. OPeNDAP makes this easy. I can query OPeNDAP for the file’s metadata, build my subset URL, and then stream data in the DAP protocol to the NetCDF library, which converts the data into NetCDF files for me. Done! And it doesn’t matter what the original data looked like or how much other stuff was in the file. I’ve gotten just what I want and I’m finished.”

Dr. Christine Smit , Principal Software Engineer

Want to empower remote Open Data Access?

By offering a simple process for remote access and manipulation of large data sets, OPeNDAP empowers researchers and other end users to collaborate without barriers.

Get Involved

Jump into the OPeNDAP community to share your experiences, answer fellow users’ questions, and contribute to our shared and ever-growing knowledge base.

CONTRIBUTE

Work With Us

Have a complex or specialized need for data retrieval or exchange? Collaborate with OPeNDAP’s engineers to develop a customized server based on your needs.

COLLABORATE