Interoperability and data-model translation

Interoperability cannot be achieved using a fixed set of formats:

• Scientific data formats (aka types) bind scientific semantics to the data thus there is an ever expanding set of such formats
• Most science data can be stored in a small set of (compuer science) data structures
• Translation to those data structures is trivial
• Translation from those data structures is easy in the context of particular user's or program's needs

Most users or analysis programs operate on a restricted set of science data types. This set limits the number of choices that translation software has given a particular input structure.

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