Format

The preferred Format for data tables is TAB-delimited TEXT-files (ASCII). Data are stored in a relational database (Sybase) in two tables: text and numeric. Single files are stored in a tape archive. File formats should follow ISO standards or at least de facto standards.

Documents

 * PDF/A (ISO19005) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A
 * ODF (ISO26300) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
 * or just plain ASCII text - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

Images

 * tiff
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format
 * ISO12639:1998
 * jpeg
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpeg
 * ISO10918-1:1994

Video
see: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Video
 * MPG Container
 * MP3
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
 * ISO/IEC 14496-4:2004?
 * MPEG2 (for PAL)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_2
 * ISO/IEC 13818-11:2004
 * Software VLC media player


 * MP4 Container
 * AAC
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
 * ISO/IEC 13818-7:2006
 * MPEG-4 (for HDTV)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4
 * ISO/IEC 14496

Audio

 * MP3
 * WAVE (WAV)
 * description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
 * example

Seismic

 * segy

ADCP

 * proprietary binary ping-format, archived on hs, linked to metadescription in Pangaea
 * ping: http://currents.soest.hawaii.edu/docs/doc/codas_doc/CODAS_pingdemo.html
 * final processed data in ascii, archived in data numeric of Pangaea (file size 100-500 MB!)
 * Example

Models

 * netCDF
 * description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetCDF
 * Unidata/NSF http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/
 * example
 * viewer panoply http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/

Compression

 * zip is iso-standard (tar is NOT standard)

Proprietary formats

 * e.g. echo sounder formats have to be archived with a detailed format description and possibly a tool for conversion to ascii if applicable.