Siphon—Simplifying Data Access and Expanding Data Sources

Siphon is a Unidata developed Python library originally used to access data from THREDDS Data Servers. The THREDDS Data Server (TDS) is a web server that provides metadata and data access for scientific datasets, using a variety of remote data access protocols, such as OPeNDAP (DAP2), NetcdfSubset Service, CdmRemote, DAP4, WMS, WCS, as well as a data collection cataloging services and metadata services. In this poster presentation, two new additions to the library are introduced. First, a new, higher level API is demonstrated, in which the choice of specific data access protocol has been abstracted away leaving users free to choose how they would like to access the data and what format they would like in return, without the need to fully understand one of the many underlying TDS interfaces. Second, Siphon has been extended to interface data server technologies outside of the TDS, a selection of which are demonstrated. These additional services further Siphon’s mission of providing an easy to use an universal interface to open-access meteorological data from the Python ecosystem.