PH5: What is it?

PH5 is the recommended archival format for active source data sets.  PASSCAL has transitioned from SEG-Y to PH5, PASSCAL's implementation of the hierarchical data format, version 5 (HDF5) data model, as the preferred archival format for active source data sets.  The strengths of HDF5 made it an attractive model for an active source archival data format.

HDF5:

• is extensibile and portable¹, allowing it to evolve and operate on a variety of platforms through a number of programming interfaces,
• is self describing¹ and allows direct access to parts of the file without the need to parse the entire file,
• has been in use for two decades and is utilized in a variety of disciplines, from aerospace to the medical field.

The PH5 format takes advantage of these attributes, storing separately the data and the meta-data, as is done within SEED (need a link to the seed intro page).  Visit The HDF Group to learn more about HDF5.

¹   Folk, M., E. Pournal 2010. Balancing Performance and Preservation Lessons learned with HDF5, http://www.hdfgroup.org/pubs/papers/HDFandpreservation_NIST_2010_paper_Folk.pdf