The document summarizes an RSI workshop on HDF & HDF-EOS. It introduces three RSI representatives and provides an agenda for the workshop. It then gives an overview of RSI, including its history, locations, products/services and industries served. The bulk of the document focuses on new HDF5 write functionality in IDL 6.1, describing over 30 new routines. It concludes by noting RSI's commitment to developing functionality for HDF5-EOS.

1. RSI at the HDF & HDF-EOS
Workshop VI
October 26, 2004 – Aurora, CO

2. RSI Representatives:
• Eddie Haskell – IDL Software Engineer
ehaskell@RSInc.com
8+ Years of IDL Experience
• Andy Pursch – Technical Sales Engineer
Mgr. apursch@RSInc.com
16+ Years of IDL Experience
Worked at NASA Goddard and JPL
• Molly Bantz – Product Marketing
Specialist mbantz@RSInc.com

3. Agenda:
• RSI Corporate Overview
• Introduction of IDL-HDF5 Write
Functionality
• Product Demonstration

4. RSI Overview: Locations
• RSI Corporate Headquarters
Boulder, Colorado
• RSI Washington D.C. Office
• RSI International Offices
United Kingdom
France
Italy
• RSI Distributors
Worldwide

5. RSI Overview: History
• 1977 RSI founded and IDL launched
• Market for IDL grows extensively and
RSI becomes a global organization
• 1994 RSI releases ENVI
• 2000 RSI acquired by KODAK
• 2004 RSS group of KODAK and RSI
become part of ITT Industries
– Space Systems Division

6. RSI Products & Services
• IDL – Interactive Data Language
ION, Virtual Machine, Dataminer, Wavelet Toolkit,
New! DICOM Toolkit
•
ENVI – Remote Sensing Solutions
FLAASH, NITF Module, RemoteView Link,
ARCGIS Reader
• RSI’s Global Services – Solutions
Algorithm Development, Consulting, Training,
Commercialization, SBIR Support

7. RSI Industries Served
RSI products and services provide
visualization and analysis solutions for a
wide variety of industries:
• Remote Sensing
• Mining/Oil & Gas
• Atmospheric Science /
• Defense/Homeland
Security
Meteorology
• Government
• Astrophysics
• Academic
• Medical Imaging
• Research &
Development
• Engineering

8. IDL and HDF5

9. IDL 6.1 HDF5
New for IDL 6.1:
The HDF5 dynamically loadable module has
been enhanced to include write capabilities.
Write capabilities include datasets, attributes,
groups, links, datatypes, and many types of
data.

10. IDL 6.1 HDF5
Prior to IDL 6.1 the
HDF5 library
included only
read capabilities
Also included a
graphical HDF5
file browser and a
parse procedure
that would parse
an entire HDF5
file and import it
into IDL.

11. IDL 6.1 HDF5
Added routines from the following HDF5
interfaces:
Attributes: H5A
Datasets: H5D
File: H5F
Group: H5G
Reference: H5R
Dataspace: H5S
Datatype: H5T

12. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5F
Updated routine:
H5F_OPEN
Added WRITE keyword to open the file for
reading and writing. Default is read only.
New routine:
H5F_CREATE
file_id = H5F_CREATE(Filename)
This always overwrites the file if one exists.
Defaults are used for create and access
properties.

13. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5T
New routine:
H5T_IDL_CREATE
Datatype_id = H5T_IDL_CREATE(Data
[, MEMBER_NAMES=vector])
Creates a datatype based on the FIRST element of
the IDL data (caution when creating a string
datatype). Compound datatypes can be created
by passing in an IDL structure.
Uses H5Tcopy and H5Tcreate.

14. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5T
New routine:
H5T_ARRAY_CREATE
Datatype_id = H5T_ARRAY_CREATE(Datatype_id,
Dimensions)
New routine:
H5T_REFERENCE_CREATE
Datatype_id = H5T_REFERENCE_CREATE([/REGION])

15. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5T
New routine:
H5T_INSERT
H5T_INSERT, Datatype_id, Name, Field_id
This procedure adds a new member to the end of
a compound datatype.
New routine:
H5T_PACK
H5T_PACK, Datatype_id

16. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5S
New routine:
H5S_CREATE_SCALAR
Dataspace_id = H5S_CREATE_SCALAR()
Complements existing routine:
H5S_CREATE_SIMPLE

17. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5D
New routine:
H5D_CREATE
Dataset_id = H5D_CREATE(Loc_id, Name,
Datatype_id, Dataspace_id,
[CHUNK_DIMENSIONS=vector])
CHUNK_DIMENSIONS is required for extendable
datasets
Default values are used for allocation time, fill
time, and fill value

18. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5D
New routine:
H5D_WRITE
H5D_WRITE, Dataset_id, Data,
[, MEMORY_SPACE_ID=value]
[, FILE_SPACE_ID=value]
Data will be converted, if possible, to the
datatype that was used in the creation of the
dataset

19. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5A
New routine:
H5A_CREATE
Attr_id = H5A_CREATE(Loc_id, Name,
Datatype_id, Dataspace_id)
Attributes are limited in size to 16KB

20. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5A
New routine:
H5A_WRITE
H5A_WRITE, Attribute_id, Data
Data will be converted, if possible, to the
datatype that was used in the creation of the
attribute

21. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5R
New routine:
H5R_CREATE
Ref = H5R_CREATE(Loc_id, Name
[, DATASPACE_ID=value])
Ref is returned as either an integer, if an object
reference is returned, or a named structure, if
a dataspace region reference is returned.
Updated routine:
H5R_DEREFERENCE

22. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5A
New routine:
H5A_DELETE
H5A_DELETE, Loc_id, Name
This function should not be used when attribute
identifiers are open on Loc_id as it may corrupt
the file.

23. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5D
New routine:
H5D_EXTEND
H5D_EXTEND, Dataset_id, Size

24. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5G
New routine:
H5G_CREATE
Group_id = H5G_CREATE(Loc_id, Name)
New routine:
H5G_GET_NUM_OBJS
Value = H5G_GET_NUM_OBJS(Loc_id)

25. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5G
New routine:
H5G_GET_OBJ_NAME_BY_IDX
Name = H5G_GET_OBJ_NAME_BY_IDX(Loc_id, Index)
New routine:
H5G_SET_COMMENT
H5G_SET_COMMENT, Loc_id, Name, Comment

26. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5G
New routine:
H5G_LINK
H5G_LINK, Loc_id, Current_Name, New_Name
[, /SOFTLINK] [, NEW_LOC_ID=value]
Combines H5GLink and H5GLink2, calling the
appropriate one as needed.
New routine:
H5G_UNLINK
H5G_UNLINK, Loc_id, Name

27. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5G
New routine:
H5G_MOVE
H5G_MOVE, Loc_id, Src_Name, Dst_Name
[, NEW_LOC_ID=value]
Combines H5GMove and H5GMove2, calling the
appropriate one as needed.

28. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5R
New routine:
H5R_GET_REGION
Dataspace_id = H5R_GET_REGION(Dataset_id,
Reference)

29. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5S
New routine:
H5S_SET_EXTENT_SIMPLE
H5S_SET_EXTENT_SIMPLE, Dataspace_id,
Dimensions [,MAX_DIMENSIONS=vector]
New routine:
H5S_SET_EXTENT_NONE
H5S_SET_EXTENT_NONE, Dataspace_id

30. IDL 6.1 HDF5 H5T
New routine:
H5T_COMMIT
H5T_COMMIT, Loc_id, Name, Datatype_id
A named Datatype can be shared by objects
within the same HDF5 file, but not by objects
in other files.

31. IDL 6.1 HDF5
New routine:
H5_CREATE
H5_CREATE, Filename, Structure
The structure is modeled after the structure returned from
the existing routine H5_PARSE().
H5_CREATE may not be able to recreate a file when given the
structure returned from H5_PARSE().
Limitations: Variable length arrays, data types not directly
supported in IDL, order of items in the file, references, …

32. IDL 6.1 HDF5
H5_CREATE
Structure tags:
_NAME : If not supplied the name of the tag will be used
(Required for top level items. Exception: if this a top level
group a new group will only be created if _NAME is
supplied)
_TYPE : “GROUP”, “DATASET”, “ATTRIBUTE”, “DATATYPE”,
“LINK”
_DATA : IDL data. Full path to object if LINK. Not used for
GROUPS
_COMMENT : comment
_LINKTYPE : “SOFT” or “HARD” LINK only, default is HARD
SUBSTRUCTURES : Items in a group, attributes, etc.

33. IDL 6.1 HDF5
H5_CREATE
Dataspaces are all defined as the full extent of the data, and
datatypes are created automatically based on the type of
the data.
Simple Example:
grey_scale = byte(bindgen(256)##(bytarr(3)+1b))
pal = {_TYPE:'Attribute', _DATA:grey_scale}
dataset = {_NAME:'Hanning', _TYPE:'Dataset', $
_DATA:hanning(100,200), PALETTE:pal}
H5_CREATE, 'myFile2.h5', dataset

34. IDL 6.1 HDF5/EOS
“RSI is committed to delivering products to the scientific data
format community. We will maintain a watch in order to develop
the functionality necessary to support missions and new formats.”
“We realize that our work is not done with HDF5-write
functionality and so are beginning the work of scoping and
scheduling development of HDF5-EOS.”
Respectfully,
Harold Cline
Director of Product Management

35. IDL 6.1 HDF5
Currently in testing. Hopefully will be available in
mid-November.
• Questions?
• Comments?
• Requests?