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Complexity

Physical scientists as a class have long demonstrated a propensity for choosing short-term benefits over long-term considerations. Thus, they frequently prefer to dump their data arrays straight from their analysis programs with little or no thought of portability or understandability; it is just simpler to do it that way.

When a standard format is used, though, an added degree of complexity is introduced. Data and metadata have to be written out in a certain order with a certain structure. The more general and flexible a standard is, the more complicated writing its datasets will be, since the structures of the data must somehow be described instead of being assumed. Even if the format is hidden behind a standard library of I/O routines, learning to call those routines (or even linking with the appropriate libraries!) represents an obstacle for many scientists.



Eric Nash 2003-09-25