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 <[email protected]> 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:[email protected]] 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 <[email protected]> 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:[email protected]] On Behalf Of >> Peter Cao >> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 17:17 >> To: [email protected] >> 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. >> [email protected] >> http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. >> [email protected] >> http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org >> > > _______________________________________________ > Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. > [email protected] > http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org > > _______________________________________________ > Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. > [email protected] > http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected] http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org
