HDFJavaIO: A Java library for reading and writing Octave HDF files

Scientific Java programs often need to interact with specialized programming environments, such as Octave and Matlab, that focus on numerical computations. This paper presents the HDFJavaIO library that allows Java programs to interact with Octave using Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) files, which are commonly used in the scientific community for working with large data sets. Because features of HDF5 files include almost all of the features of NetCDF, this library and method may also be used to create data files that can be used with NCL scripts and other applications that use these large-data formats without the need for further modifications by Java application developers. This paper presents the relevant details of the Octave HDF5 file format and the Java techniques used to build the data interchange library. It also presents the results of an experimental analysis of the library’s performance and its comparison to existing approaches.