The DDS is the syntactic metadata for a data set.

• The DDS is rigidly constrained.
  
  
• This metadata is held in containers within the DDS that associate the metadata with the variables in the data set.
  
  
• The DDS is obtained by the server from the data set.
  
  
• The DDS for a data set may be requested from the browser by appending .dds to the data set name.
  
  

The DDS for the TOPEX data set discussed above is: