A separate section of this workshop discussed the Climate and Forecast (CF) Conventions.

• The NetCDF User's Guide recommends generic attribute conventions, such as use of "units" and "Conventions" attributes.
• Other netCDF conventions are published agreements about how data of a particular type or within a particular discipline should be represented to foster interoperability.
• Most conventions are about attributes and their meanings. This allows freedom to choose convenient variable and dimension names.
• Use of an existing convention is highly recommended to make data usable in applications that require conformance to that convention.
• We recommend use of the CF Conventions, if applicable.
• A netCDF file should use the global "Conventions" attribute to identify which conventions it uses, for example:

       :Conventions = "CF-1.0" ;
    

• Software that handles data should indicate not only what formats it can access, but also which conventions it "understands".

2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Best Practices