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Recommendation:

Only compression filters that are officially supported by a default installation of the current netCDF4 software distribution should be used in Earth Science data products.  Currently, DEFLATE is the only such filter.


Background:

NetCDF4 has recently (4.6.0) enabled access to non-default (i.e., non-DEFLATE) HDF5 compression filters.  However the filter identification and access are currently obscure (~five digit IDs) and non-portable (no guarantees client software will be able to decompress them).  DEFLATE is the only compression filter that is guaranteed to work with netCDF4.


Recommendation Details:

DEFLATE is the only compression filter that is guaranteed to work with netCDF4, and so DEFLATE is the only compression filter that should be used in Earth Science data products.

This recommendation may evolve as netCDF4 improves its compression filter capabilities.

Here is a recent link to netCDF4 filter support in Version 4.7.2 : https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/md__Volumes_Workspace_Ward_releases_netcdf-c-4_87_82_netcdf-c_docs_filters.html .

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