Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) CODATA format

The name CODATA ("common data") was chosen in 1975 for internal use at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The LBNL CODATA format bears no relation to the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) which was established in 1966 by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). LBNL was previously unaware of the CODATA committee and apologizes to ICSU for LBNL's use of the term CODATA.

Ref. 1, the primary CODATA reference, is extremely detailed and partly out of date.

Refs 2-5 describe the ASCII CODATA file format that is used for information exchange in LOOKUP and SEEDIS and DBUTIL, and the CODATA Tools used to manipulate those files. The CODATA Tools have been heavily used at LBNL since 1980. Implementation outside LBNL would be a simple task.

Ref. 6 describes the Software Tools, which provide the transportable I/O routines used by the CODATA Tools. If desired, the CODATA Tools could be easily modified to use standard UNIX I/O routines rather than the Software Tools.

Ref. 7 concerns the binary SEEDIS compressed file format, which is an extension of CODATA and is used for archival storage of large files in SEEDIS. Implementation of Ref. 7 outside LBNL would be difficult and not particularly useful.

1. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Computer Science and Mathematics Department, CODATA User's Manual -- Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Internal Document, LBID-021 Rev, August 1982. About 300 pages including attachments.

For printing, the obsolete DCL command file csa.lbl.gov::lbl131:[seedis.cotools]manual.com invokes lblh::sy$ush1:[merrill.docs]codata.inc which has been moved to seedis.lbl.gov::disk$seed4:[merrill.docs]codata.inc.

The file codata.inc invokes about 25 other files which were also previously on lblh::sy$ush1: and have been moved to seedis.lbl.gov::disk$seed4:

To ftp to seedis.lbl.gov, use account seedtest. Anonymous FTP is not implemented. Download codata.inc and search for the word "include" to obtain names of all necessary files. Then download the remaining files.

ftp seedis.lbl.gov
user seedtest
pass		(call Deane Merrill for password)
cd disk$seed4:[merrill.docs]
dir codata.inc
get codata.inc

2. Merrill, D. and McCarthy, J. CODATA Tools: Portable Software for Managing Self-Describing Data Files -- Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Report, LBL-15441, February 1983. in Computer Science and Statistics: Twelfth Annual Symposium on the Interface (Houston TX, March 1983), pp. 245-251. Not available in machine readable form. This reference describes some design features which are not fully implemented in Ref. 3.

3. The CODATA tools are installed in csa.lbl.gov. Online documentation:

telnet csa.lbl.gov 
Username: seedtest
Password: 		(call Deane Merrill for password)
terminal: vt100
cotools
coman coman

4. Examples of usage of CODATA tools: in DCL command files used by SEEDIS, mostly in lbl131:[seedis...]*.com. To run SEEDIS:

telnet csa.lbl.gov
Username: seedtest
Password: 		(call Deane Merrill for password)
terminal: vt100
seedis

To download files:

ftp csa.lbl.gov
user seedtest
pass			(call Deane Merrill for password)
cd lbl131:[seedis]
dir seedis.com
get seedis.com

5. Source code for CODATA Tools, written by Deane Merrill in RATFOR around 1980, are in csa.lbl.gov::lbl131:[seedis.cotools]. RATFOR source code is in cotools.r. Fortran source code (converted from RATFOR with fixed array dimensions) in cotools.for. Both files cotools.r and cotools.for are in the format used by the Software Tools ar module.

6. The CODATA Tools are compatible with, and depend upon, the Software Tools described in:

Kernighan BW and Plauger PJ. Software Tools. Addison-Wesley, 1976.
ISBN 0-201-03669-X.

The Software Tools are installed in csa.lbl.gov. For online documentation, telnet to csa.lbl.gov as any user and type "intro".

7. Data files in SEEDIS are archived in a compressed binary format which is an extension of CODATA. The program EXTRACT, which reads the binary format, is in lbl131:[seedis.extract]newextract.exe. Source code is mostly in C and Fortran. For locations of libraries and source code, see lbl131:[seedis.extract]newextrlink.com. Source code for (most) low level routines is in lbl131:[seedis.healey].

In 1995 lbl131:[seedis.healey] and [seedis.extract] were copied to disk$seed1:, disk$seed3:, disk$seed4:, and disk$seed7:

back to SEEDIS
back to software maintained by Deane Merrill
back to FIPS nation codes as of 1984

seedis/codata.html 3/29/96 in:

http://parep2.lbl.gov/mdocs
http://merrill.wwh.net/mdocs
http://imap.chesapeake.net/~merrill/mdocs