The DAS is the semantic metadata for a data set.

• There is no constraint on the metadata that is placed here.
  
  
  • The DAS could be empty or could hold an FGDC compliant description of the data set.
    
    
  • At a minimum we would like to see semantic use translational metadata here.
    
    
• This metadata is held in containers within the DAS that associate the metadata with the variables in the data set.
  
  
• The DAS may come from metadata bound to the data set (e.g., NetCDF) or from an ancillary DAS file.
  
  
• The DAS for a data set may be requested from the browser by appending .das to the data set name.
  
  

The DAS for the TOPEX data set discussed above is: