Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Hdf-forum archives
1

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically, I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes. It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data, and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

2

Hi,

  I'm also interested in hearing how HDF users deal with this kind of
data with existing tools.

  By the way, what's your domain that needs resizing data with varying
dimensions (e.g., Earth science / Finance / Machine Learning / Life
science)?

   I'm asking this because what kind sensor or software that you have
generates such arrays with variable size data and how your existing
solution manages them. I'd appreciate if you can give a specific
example problem with some sample data.

···

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched the
web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with hdf5 to
make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically, I need a way
to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for which I figures hdf5
would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes.
It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the popular
tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data, and ViTables I
haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with varying
dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

3

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the dimensions, or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

···

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:

Hello,
Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.
I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically, I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes. It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data, and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.
So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.
regards,
Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

4

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. In response to H. Joe Lee, my application is in earth sciences, more specifically in land use modeling, and my data is configuration data for the model. It is in that sense that I may be using hdf5 in an untypical way, it is not data that is acquired by sensors or such, but the data in my hdf5 files represents calibration parameters for the model. Hence the need to be able to easily edit them, and to resize arrays - for example when you want to change the number of land use classes in a specific simulation, you need to be able to resize a 10x500x600 array to 8x500x600 (for example). We now use a multitude of solutions - xml files, 2d matrices in single files where the number of files is the 3rd dimension, etc.

As for the question below, it is mostly (2), and sometimes (1). Example of (2) I gave earlier, an example of (1) is time series of 2d data - in some cases you enter values for e.g. 2000 and 2030, and the software interpolates the values for the years between that, but a user may enter data for 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. In that case, the length of that dimension of the array would be 4, whereas in the first case it would be 2.

regards

Roel

···

________________________________
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of Peter Cao
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
To: hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the dimensions, or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:
Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically, I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes. It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data, and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org<mailto:Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org>
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

5

Hi, Roel!

  Thanks for your reply. I hope someone can write an easy-to-use GUI
tool like MS Excel for HDF data array manipulation you described in
near future.

  If you're not limited to GUI tool, I think script-language tool like
NCL (free) IDL/MATLAB (commercial) can do the array manipulation you
described.

  For example, you can easily read & subset HDF5 array [1], reshape
the array [2], and save it [3] in NetCDF-4 (which is HDF5 under the
hood) in NCL. The only drawback of NCL compared to IDL/MATLAB is
that it doesn't run on Windows but it supports Cygwin so you may want
to try it.

[1] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/NSIDC/GLAH13_633_2103_001_1317_0_01_0001.h5.ncl
[2] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/LaRC/MISR_AM1_GRP_ELLIPSOID_GM_P117_O058421_BA_F03_0024_Blue_Radiance_RDQI.ncl
[3] http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/netcdf4.shtml

···

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. In response to H. Joe Lee, my application is in
earth sciences, more specifically in land use modeling, and my data is
configuration data for the model. It is in that sense that I may be using
hdf5 in an untypical way, it is not data that is acquired by sensors or
such, but the data in my hdf5 files represents calibration parameters for
the model. Hence the need to be able to easily edit them, and to resize
arrays - for example when you want to change the number of land use classes
in a specific simulation, you need to be able to resize a 10x500x600 array
to 8x500x600 (for example). We now use a multitude of solutions - xml files,
2d matrices in single files where the number of files is the 3rd dimension,
etc.

As for the question below, it is mostly (2), and sometimes (1). Example of
(2) I gave earlier, an example of (1) is time series of 2d data - in some
cases you enter values for e.g. 2000 and 2030, and the software interpolates
the values for the years between that, but a user may enter data for 2000,
2010, 2020 and 2030. In that case, the length of that dimension of the array
would be 4, whereas in the first case it would be 2.

regards

Roel

________________________________
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Cao
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
To: hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the dimensions,
or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched the
web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with hdf5 to
make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically, I need a way
to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for which I figures hdf5
would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes.
It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the popular
tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data, and ViTables I
haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with varying
dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

6

Hi,

For me personally it wouldn't be much of a problem - I would write my own command line tools that drive the baseline tools anyway, or amend my existing C++ tools to resize arrays. However the whole point of me switching to hdf5 would be that other users (internally and externally) would have easy-to-use, GUI tools for working with this data. Some users struggle with the concept of an array with more than 2 dimensions - suggesting they work with command line tools, especially ones with large amounts of options and manuals of dozens of pages, would be a regression in terms of support burden for me.

While HDF Explorer seems very capable in most respects and is very reasonably priced, it doesn't let you resize data sets, which is a showstopper for me.

Thanks for taking the time to think about my issues!

regards,

Roel

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of H. Joe Lee
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 20:33
To: HDF Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Hi, Roel!

  Thanks for your reply. I hope someone can write an easy-to-use GUI tool like MS Excel for HDF data array manipulation you described in near future.

  If you're not limited to GUI tool, I think script-language tool like NCL (free) IDL/MATLAB (commercial) can do the array manipulation you described.

  For example, you can easily read & subset HDF5 array [1], reshape the array [2], and save it [3] in NetCDF-4 (which is HDF5 under the
hood) in NCL. The only drawback of NCL compared to IDL/MATLAB is that it doesn't run on Windows but it supports Cygwin so you may want to try it.

[1] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/NSIDC/GLAH13_633_2103_001_1317_0_01_0001.h5.ncl
[2] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/LaRC/MISR_AM1_GRP_ELLIPSOID_GM_P117_O058421_BA_F03_0024_Blue_Radiance_RDQI.ncl
[3] http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/netcdf4.shtml

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. In response to H. Joe Lee, my application is
in earth sciences, more specifically in land use modeling, and my data
is configuration data for the model. It is in that sense that I may be
using
hdf5 in an untypical way, it is not data that is acquired by sensors
or such, but the data in my hdf5 files represents calibration
parameters for the model. Hence the need to be able to easily edit
them, and to resize arrays - for example when you want to change the
number of land use classes in a specific simulation, you need to be
able to resize a 10x500x600 array to 8x500x600 (for example). We now
use a multitude of solutions - xml files, 2d matrices in single files
where the number of files is the 3rd dimension, etc.

As for the question below, it is mostly (2), and sometimes (1).
Example of
(2) I gave earlier, an example of (1) is time series of 2d data - in
some cases you enter values for e.g. 2000 and 2030, and the software
interpolates the values for the years between that, but a user may
enter data for 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. In that case, the length of
that dimension of the array would be 4, whereas in the first case it would be 2.

regards

Roel

________________________________
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of
Peter Cao
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
To: hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the
dimensions, or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched
the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with
hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically,
I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for
which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes.
It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the
popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data,
and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with
varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

7

Roel,

I am a newbie at HDF but have been reading this thread and wanted to suggest an idea. We are working on some new tools that make connections between HDF and data in XML and JSON. As I have read this thread I am wondering if a strategy like this might work:

1) Make a single input file that has all of the configuration arrays you need and make all of these arrays larger than you ever expect to use. Fill them with some fill value. The example you sent had very few items. I'm not sure that is representative, but would empty space in these arrays be a problem?

2) create a json/xml representation of the configuration information which would be the target of the editing interface. Could be edited as text or a lightweight web interface that writes json/xml could be used. Once the data are edited, the xml/json would be converted to HDF, using some tools we are testing here, and the model would run. The json/xml could also be displayed through the web interface in a way that helps users understand what they have and ensure it is correct. These formats could also be tested to make sure errors were not introduced in the editing process.

This approach is a bit different, but it is one of the sorts of things we are thinking about as possible future directions. Sounds like this could be an interesting use case. Am I right?

Ted

==== Ted Habermann ===========================
   Director of Earth Science, The HDF Group
   New phone#: (217) 531-4202
   New email: thabermann@hdfgroup.org
==== thabermann@hdfgroup.org ==================

···

On May 16, 2013, at 6:21 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hi,

For me personally it wouldn't be much of a problem - I would write my own command line tools that drive the baseline tools anyway, or amend my existing C++ tools to resize arrays. However the whole point of me switching to hdf5 would be that other users (internally and externally) would have easy-to-use, GUI tools for working with this data. Some users struggle with the concept of an array with more than 2 dimensions - suggesting they work with command line tools, especially ones with large amounts of options and manuals of dozens of pages, would be a regression in terms of support burden for me.

While HDF Explorer seems very capable in most respects and is very reasonably priced, it doesn't let you resize data sets, which is a showstopper for me.

Thanks for taking the time to think about my issues!

regards,

Roel

-----Original Message-----
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of H. Joe Lee
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 20:33
To: HDF Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Hi, Roel!

Thanks for your reply. I hope someone can write an easy-to-use GUI tool like MS Excel for HDF data array manipulation you described in near future.

If you're not limited to GUI tool, I think script-language tool like NCL (free) IDL/MATLAB (commercial) can do the array manipulation you described.

For example, you can easily read & subset HDF5 array [1], reshape the array [2], and save it [3] in NetCDF-4 (which is HDF5 under the
hood) in NCL. The only drawback of NCL compared to IDL/MATLAB is that it doesn't run on Windows but it supports Cygwin so you may want to try it.

[1] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/NSIDC/GLAH13_633_2103_001_1317_0_01_0001.h5.ncl
[2] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/LaRC/MISR_AM1_GRP_ELLIPSOID_GM_P117_O058421_BA_F03_0024_Blue_Radiance_RDQI.ncl
[3] http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/netcdf4.shtml

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. In response to H. Joe Lee, my application is
in earth sciences, more specifically in land use modeling, and my data
is configuration data for the model. It is in that sense that I may be
using
hdf5 in an untypical way, it is not data that is acquired by sensors
or such, but the data in my hdf5 files represents calibration
parameters for the model. Hence the need to be able to easily edit
them, and to resize arrays - for example when you want to change the
number of land use classes in a specific simulation, you need to be
able to resize a 10x500x600 array to 8x500x600 (for example). We now
use a multitude of solutions - xml files, 2d matrices in single files
where the number of files is the 3rd dimension, etc.

As for the question below, it is mostly (2), and sometimes (1).
Example of
(2) I gave earlier, an example of (1) is time series of 2d data - in
some cases you enter values for e.g. 2000 and 2030, and the software
interpolates the values for the years between that, but a user may
enter data for 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. In that case, the length of
that dimension of the array would be 4, whereas in the first case it would be 2.

regards

Roel

________________________________
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of
Peter Cao
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
To: hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the
dimensions, or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched
the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with
hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically,
I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for
which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes.
It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the
popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data,
and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with
varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

8

Hi Roel!

+1 for "However the whole point of me switching to hdf5 would be
that other users (internally and externally) would have easy-to-use,
GUI tools for working with this data. Some users struggle with the
concept of an array with more than 2 dimensions - suggesting they work
with command line tools, especially ones with large amounts of options
and manuals of dozens of pages, would be a regression in terms of
support burden for me."

  In my opinion, all HDF data manipulation should be done easily with
your fingertips on tablets with 0 programming involved.

···

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hi,

For me personally it wouldn't be much of a problem - I would write my own command line tools that drive the baseline tools anyway, or amend my existing C++ tools to resize arrays. However the whole point of me switching to hdf5 would be that other users (internally and externally) would have easy-to-use, GUI tools for working with this data. Some users struggle with the concept of an array with more than 2 dimensions - suggesting they work with command line tools, especially ones with large amounts of options and manuals of dozens of pages, would be a regression in terms of support burden for me.

While HDF Explorer seems very capable in most respects and is very reasonably priced, it doesn't let you resize data sets, which is a showstopper for me.

Thanks for taking the time to think about my issues!

regards,

Roel

-----Original Message-----
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of H. Joe Lee
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 20:33
To: HDF Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Hi, Roel!

  Thanks for your reply. I hope someone can write an easy-to-use GUI tool like MS Excel for HDF data array manipulation you described in near future.

  If you're not limited to GUI tool, I think script-language tool like NCL (free) IDL/MATLAB (commercial) can do the array manipulation you described.

  For example, you can easily read & subset HDF5 array [1], reshape the array [2], and save it [3] in NetCDF-4 (which is HDF5 under the
hood) in NCL. The only drawback of NCL compared to IDL/MATLAB is that it doesn't run on Windows but it supports Cygwin so you may want to try it.

[1] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/NSIDC/GLAH13_633_2103_001_1317_0_01_0001.h5.ncl
[2] http://hdfeos.org/zoo/LaRC/MISR_AM1_GRP_ELLIPSOID_GM_P117_O058421_BA_F03_0024_Blue_Radiance_RDQI.ncl
[3] http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/netcdf4.shtml

--
HDF: Software that Powers Science

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Roel Vanhout <rvanhout@riks.nl> wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. In response to H. Joe Lee, my application is
in earth sciences, more specifically in land use modeling, and my data
is configuration data for the model. It is in that sense that I may be
using
hdf5 in an untypical way, it is not data that is acquired by sensors
or such, but the data in my hdf5 files represents calibration
parameters for the model. Hence the need to be able to easily edit
them, and to resize arrays - for example when you want to change the
number of land use classes in a specific simulation, you need to be
able to resize a 10x500x600 array to 8x500x600 (for example). We now
use a multitude of solutions - xml files, 2d matrices in single files
where the number of files is the 3rd dimension, etc.

As for the question below, it is mostly (2), and sometimes (1).
Example of
(2) I gave earlier, an example of (1) is time series of 2d data - in
some cases you enter values for e.g. 2000 and 2030, and the software
interpolates the values for the years between that, but a user may
enter data for 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. In that case, the length of
that dimension of the array would be 4, whereas in the first case it would be 2.

regards

Roel

________________________________
From: Hdf-forum [mailto:hdf-forum-bounces@hdfgroup.org] On Behalf Of
Peter Cao
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17
To: hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] Tools to edit hdf5 files?

Could you be more specific on resizing data? Is it any of the following?

1) you defined your data as variable size and add/delete data from it,
2) you define fixed length of dimensions and extend/shrink the
dimensions, or
3) you define as 2D and change it to 1D, 3D, etc.

Thanks
--pc

On 5/8/2013 4:00 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:

Hello,

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer, I've searched
the web and archives long and hard and couldn't find an answer.

I'm looking to replace some of the data files of our software with
hdf5 to make it easier to edit them with external tools. Specifically,
I need a way to edit multi-dimensional arrays of numeric data, for
which I figures hdf5 would be a natural fit. However what I need are arrays with variable sizes.
It seems to be complicated to do that through the API, none of the
popular tools (HDFView, HDF Explorer) seem to support resizing data,
and ViTables I haven't been able to get to run on Windows.

So my question is - is hdf5 suitable as a data format for data with
varying dimensions? What tools will let me work with that? Thanks.

regards,

Roel

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
Hdf-forum@hdfgroup.org
http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org