HDF Newsletter #153

(This newsletter is being posted again to ensure that there is a record in
the HDF-Forum archives.)

To view from a browser see:
    https://support.hdfgroup.org/newsletters/newsletter153.pdf

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                             Newsletter #153
                               May 1, 2017

CONTENTS
  . Changes in Download Process
  . Release of HDF5-1.10.1
    - Known Issues

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

Changes in Download Process

Please be aware that the HDF5-1.10.1 release is the first release in which
the software is located on The HDF Group home page:

    https://www.hdfgroup.org/

The source code does not require a login, but the built binaries can ONLY
be downloaded by first logging in.

Release of HDF5-1.10.1

The HDF5-1.10.1 release is now available for download from:

    https://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/hdf5/

For complete details regarding this release, see:

    https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/docNewFeatures/index.html

User documentation for HDF5-1.10.1 can be accessed from:

    https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/

This release contains major new features and changes. Please be aware that
the new features use extensions to the HDF5 File Format. The new features
are listed below:

  o Metadata Cache Image

    HDF5 metadata is typically small, and scattered throughout the HDF5 file.
    This can affect performance, particularly on large HPC systems. The
    Metadata Cache Image feature can improve performance by writing the
    metadata cache in a single block on file close, and then populating the
    cache with the contents of this block on file open, thus avoiding the many
    small I/O operations that would otherwise be required on file open and
    close.

  o Metadata Cache Evict on Close

    The HDF5 library's metadata cache is fairly conservative about holding on
    to HDF5 object metadata (object headers, chunk index structures, etc.),
    which can cause the cache size to grow, resulting in memory pressure on
    an application or system. The "evict on close" property will cause all
    metadata for an object to be evicted from the cache as long as metadata
    is not referenced from any other open object.

  o Paged Aggregation

    The current HDF5 file space allocation accumulates small pieces of metadata
    and raw data in aggregator blocks which are not page aligned and vary
    widely in sizes. The paged aggregation feature was implemented to provide
    efficient paged access of these small pieces of metadata and raw data.

  o Page Buffering

    Small and random I/O accesses on parallel file systems result in poor
    performance for applications. Page buffering in conjunction with paged
    aggregation can improve performance by giving an application control of
    minimizing HDF5 I/O requests to a specific granularity and alignment.

Other important changes include the following:

  o A mechanism for disabling the SWMR file locking scheme was added.
  o The HDF5 Fortran library can now be compiled with the NAG compiler.
  o A new option was added to the h5clear tool to remove a metadata cache image.

For a detailed list of changes in this release, please see the Release Notes:

https://support.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/releases/hdf5-1.10/hdf5-1.10.1/src/unpacked/release_docs/

Also see the "HDF5 Software Changes from Release to Release" document for
information on what has changed:

   https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html

Known Issues
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  o HDF5 releases are always backward compatible. In general, they are also
    forward compatible in maintenance releases of a major release. However, the
    HDF5-1.10.0 maintenance release will NOT be able to read HDF5-1.10.1 files
    that contain a metadata cache image. The metadata cache image must be
    removed with the h5clear tool in order for HDF5-1.10.0 to read the file.

  o The CMake instructions for building the HDF5 examples omit two files that
    need to be copied to the directory where the examples are to be run. The
    instructions specify to copy the HDF5_Example.cmake file. However, the
    HDF5_Examples_options.cmake and CTestScript.cmake files must also be copied
    over.

    These instructions are found in the README.txt file that comes with each
    pre-built windows binary, and they are also found in Section II of the
    USING_CMake_Examples.txt file in the release_docs directory of the source code.

  o The following test lib files are installed when building HDF5 using autotools:

    libdynlib1.la libdynlib3.la libdynlibadd.la libdynlibdump.la libdynlibvers.la
    libdynlib1.so libdynlib3.so libdynlibadd.so libdynlibdump.so libdynlibvers.so
    libdynlib2.la libdynlib4.la libdynlibdiff.la libdynlibls.la
    libdynlib2.so libdynlib4.so libdynlibdiff.so libdynlibls.so

   These should not be installed and can be removed from the lib directory
   (rm lib/libdynlib*). They will not be included in future releases.

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For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact:

    help@hdfgroup.org