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About OPeNDAP

OPeNDAP stands for "Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol"

OPeNDAP is both the name of a non-profit organization and the commonly-used name of a protocol which the OPeNDAP organization has developed. The DAP2 protocol provides a discipline-neutral means of requesting and providing data across the World Wide Web. The goal is to allow end users, whoever they may be, to access immediately whatever data they require in a form they can use, all while using applications they already possess and are familiar with. In the field of oceanography, OPeNDAP has already helped the research community make significant progress towards this end. Ultimately, it is hoped, OPeNDAP will be a fundamental component of systems which provide machine-to-machine interoperability with semantic meaning in a highly distributed environment of heterogeneous datasets. The OPeNDAP organization exists to develop, implement, and promulgate the OPeNDAP protocol. It presents the results of its work freely to the public with the hope that it will be of service in many disciplines and facilitate sharing of and access to their data streams.