Core conceptsΒΆ

As noted earlier and described in the previous example, Sidre provides five main classes: DataStore, Buffer, Group, View, and Attribute. In combination, these classes implement a data store with a tree structure to organize data in a hierarchy. Before delving into details of these classes/concepts, we summarize their basic intent:

  • DataStore is the main interface to access a data hierarchy.

  • Buffer describes and holds a contiguous chunk of data in memory.

  • Group defines parent-child relationships in a hierarchical tree data structure and provides access to file I/O operations.

  • View provides a virtual description of data and access to it.

  • Attribute allows a program to attach metadata to View objects for processing data selectively.

The following sections summarize the main interface features and functionality of these Sidre classes.

Note

Interfaces for each of these classes are provided natively in C++, C, and Fortran.