Importance of Heliophysics standards and metadata guidelines for
effective data analysis
Abstract
The Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) has developed and/or leveraged
standardized self-describing data formats, metadata for datasets and
parameters, time conventions, and dataset and filenaming conventions
that enable effective data analysis and browsing using generic
easy-to-use software and web services. Software and services include
SPDF’s CDAWeb , and external tools such as Autoplot and SPEDAS IDL
library. Standards and conventions include: datasets and filenaming and
, the CDF scientific data format (including its new Python library ),
the ISTP/IACG/SPDF Guidelines for global and variable attributes , time
variable types , and the SKTeditor metadata creation tool . The SPASE
standards for describing datasets for easy searching are crucial to the
Heliophysics Data Portal .