You should be able to identify your current level of expertise in the list below. A specific goal of the workshop is to increase participant's levels on the following scale:

0. No knowledge of about netCDF
1. Can use ncdump and "off the shelf" analysis or visualization software to look at existing netCDF data
2. Know how to use ncgen to generate simple netCDF files from CDL created in an editor
3. Can use some conversion utilities to convert files among different formats, such as netCDF, HDF, and GRIB
4. Know how to use utility packages such as NCO, NCL, CDO, or MATLAB to process data from netCDF files into new netCDF files, e.g. combine time series or compute ensemble averages
5. Can write simple programs to add data to existing files or write new netCDF data matching a specified structure
6. Know how to write custom programs to read selected data from netCDF files of a specific known structure
7. Understand the netCDF-3 classic data model, format, and limitations well enough to design netCDF files that represent the intent of data providers, make good use of existing conventions, and make data easy to access, analyze, and process
8. Can write generic netCDF software to read any netCDF-3 classic model data (or any netCDF data conforming to widely used conventions such as CF) and do something useful with it (copy, extract data matching a query, aggregate, convert to another representation)
9. Understand difference between classic and enhanced mode, and how to use netCDF-4 features that don't use the enhanced model
10. Can use parallelism to eliminate netCDF I/O bottlenecks on new computing architectures
11. Can design new netCDF metadata conventions for broad community use for new kinds of model output, observational data, or data structures, e.g. staggered grids, satellite data, or GIS use
12. Can write generic software to read any netCDF-4 enhanced model data and do something useful with it (copy, extract specified data, aggregate in useful ways, convert to another representation).
13. Can design a common data model to support implementing generic software to read many different representations of scientific data through a common interface.
14. Can implement clients and servers for remote access through standard protocols.
15. You could document, support, and evolve the above for a community that likes to stretch the capabilities of existing software and make it smoothly interoperable with other independently developed systems such as Open Geospatial Consortium services, ISO standards, and international modeling and observing programs

2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > Introduction