Our plans are constrained by two strong backward compatibility constraints:

• Don't break archives: new library software must be able to access previous netCDF data,
• Don't break programs: new libraries must support previous APIs.

Release 4.2 is under development. It includes bug fixes, performance improvements, and refactoring of netCDF-C internals. We hope to release it towards the end of this year.

Plans for development during the next year are currently fairly fluid. You can follow what we are doing or plan to do on our Jira site.

Current plans include some or all of these:

• Wavelet based compression as good as GRIB2
• Client support for new streaming protocol and remote services API: coordinate-system bounding-box data access
• Diskless (in-memory) files
• Ability to read Argonne's BigNetCDF format
• Use of Fortran-2003 C-interoperability layer to call C functions portably
• Separate distributions and configuration for C, Fortran, and C++ libraries
• All documentation converted to DOxygen
• Comprehensive test file collection for use by tool developers
• High-level API for use by developers of generic netCDF-4 tools
• Improvements to Windows port, DLL support

2011 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > The Future of netCDF