Note: DODS is not restricted to ocean data; the name exists for historical reasons.
DODS provides a way for users (researchers, educators, policy makers, ...) to access scientific data anywhere on the Internet from their familiar scientific analysis and visualization programs (Matlab, IDL, Ferret, GrADS, ...). By developing network versions of commonly used Application Program Interface (API) libraries, such as NetCDF, HDF, and JGOFS, the DODS project has capitalized on years of development of data analysis and display packages that use those APIs. Data servers for the Web can, in turn, be built upon DODS-enabled applications. The Live Access Server, a component of the DODS project, is an example of such a data server.
DODS is a client/server architecture. A client sends requests for data to a server on the network that responds with the requested data. This is exactly the model used by the World Wide Web, where a Web browser (a client program) submits requests to Web servers that respond with Web pages (data). Of course, DODS clients can do much more than browse. Using flexible data structures to describe scientific data, the DODS servers deliver arbitrary subsets of real binary data directly to the client program in such a way that the program "believes" it is reading a local file of a familiar format.
Installing a DODS server typically involves little more than an ftp file download.
The DODS system was recently selected by the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) to fulfill the role of Virtual Ocean Data Hub (VODHub), a single access mechanism uniting the widest possible array of oceanographic data.
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