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                              Newsletter #39
                              January 7, 1999

CONTENTS
                                            *******************************
Parallel Release of HDF5 version 1.0.1      * Visit the HDF home page     *
   - Changes Since the Beta Release         * for up-to-date information  *
   - Platforms Supported                    * on HDF:                     *
                                            *   http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ *  
Release of HDF5 version 1.0 Beta for        *******************************
   Windows NT/95

HDF5 Utilities - h5dump and h5toh4

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Parallel Release of HDF5 version 1.0.1
======================================

We are pleased to announce the first official release of 
the PARALLEL IMPLEMENTATION of HDF5, version 1.0.1.  It uses the 
ROMIO version of the MPIO interface for parallel I/O support.

Following are the supported features in this release:

  - HDF5 files are accessed according to the communicator and INFO
    object defined in the property list set by H5Pset_mpi.

  - Independent read and write accesses can be made to fixed and extendible 
    dimension datasets. 

  - Collective read and write accesses can be made to fixed dimension datasets.

The parallel HDF5 release distribution is located at:

      ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/dist/HDF5/hdf5-1.0.1/

The web-site for HDF5 is located at:

      http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/


Changes Since the Beta Release
------------------------------
  -  Support for Accessing Extendible Dimension Datasets has been
     added.

     Extendible dimension datasets must use chunked storage methods.
     A new function, H5Dextend, was created to extend the current
     dimensions of a dataset.  The current release requires the
     MPI application to make a collective call to extend the
     dimensions of an extendible dataset before writing to the
     newly extended area.  (The serial HDF5 version does not require 
     the call to H5Dextend.  The dimensions of an extendible
     dataset are increased when data is written beyond the
     current dimensions but within the maximum dimensions.)
     The required collective call of H5Dextend may be relaxed
     in a future release.

     This release only supports independent read and write accesses
     to extendible datasets.  Collective accesses to extendible
     datasets will be implemented in a future release.

  -  Collective access to fixed dimension datasets is supported, using 
     the transfer property list argument of H5Dread and H5Dwrite.

  -  HDF5 files are opened according to the Communicator and INFO object.
     H5Dopen now records the communicator and INFO object set up by 
     H5Pset_mpi and passes them to the corresponding MPIO open file calls 
     for processing.


Platforms Supported
-------------------

This release has been tested on the following platforms:

   Intel Red
   IBM SP2
   SGI Origin 2000



Release of HDF5 version 1.0 Beta for Windows NT/95
==================================================

A beta version of HDF5 version 1.0 is now available for
Windows NT/95.  You can download this from:

     ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/dist/HDF5/hdf5-windows-beta/ 



HDF5 Utilities - h5dump and h5toh4
==================================

Alpha source code is available which contains the h5toh4
and improved h5dump utilities.  Binaries for Solaris 2.5 are
also included.  The h5dump utility offers a convenient way to dump 
the contents of an HDF5 file.  The h5toh4 utility enables you to 
convert some HDF5 objects into HDF4 objects. 

Both utilities are documented in the tools section of the HDF5 
Reference Manual, which is included with the alpha source code.

You can download this from:

      ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/dist/HDF5/hdf5-tools-alpha/


--------------------------------------------------------------
For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

   hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu