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THG Home Page:                   http://hdfgroup.org/
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                            Newsletter #95
                           September 4, 2007

CONTENTS

 . RFCs:
   - HDF5 Indexing
   - Crash Proofing HDF5
   - Using Skip Lists for Indexing Chunk Locations
       With One-dimensional Unlimited Datasets

 . Request for Use Cases - h5import and text data


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

RFCs
====

RFCs (Requests For Comments) are documents posted by developers,
requesting feedback regarding new features or changes being proposed
for the HDF software.
  
Following are three new RFCs for HDF5, which may be of interest to
users (Please note that the location of the RFCs listed below
is different than the THG home page.):

  HDF5 Indexing:
  =============
  http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/RFC/HDF5/hdf5Indexing/

  Provides an indexing scheme to enable scientists to
  efficiently extract information from large, complex datasets.

  Crash Proofing HDF5:
  ===================
  http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/RFC/HDF5/journaling/Metadata_Journaling_RFC.pdf

  Uses journaling to provide periodic rollback points, so as to minimize
  file corruption in HDF5.

  Using Skip Lists for Indexing Chunk Locations
   With One-dimensional Unlimited Datasets:
  =============================================
  http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/RFC/HDF5/SkipListChunkIndex/SkipListChunkIndex.html

  Provides performance improvements for unlimited 1-dimensional chunked
  datasets, by use of Skip Lists.

Comments regarding RFCs can be sent to either the developer or the THG
Helpdesk (help@hdfgroup.org).


Request for Use Cases - h5import and text data
==============================================

h5import is an HDF5 tool that converts floating point or integer
data stored in ASCII or binary files into the HDF5 format.
Currently h5import only processes numeric data. The HDF Group
plans to add support for importing text data into HDF5 using
h5import.

We are now soliciting use cases that will guide the design of the
text import feature in h5import. Please consider text
you might want to import and how you would want to access that
text once it is in the HDF5 file, and send your use cases to
pvn@hdfgroup.org before September 17, 2007.

Thank you for your help as we strive to improve our tools.