Importance of Heliophysics Standards and Metadata Guidelines for Effective Data Analysis

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 .