The presentation will be online. This format will allow us to feed into the code Galacticus, a very impressive (open source) semi-analytic galaxy evolution code. http://sites.google.com/site/galacticusmodel/ They're pursuing a standardization, and I personally feel more comfortable following a path that leads to convergence of formats, particularly with this value add, instead of a new microformat of our own. On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Stephen Skory <stephenskory@yahoo.com> wrote:

...

I just saw a presentation about a semi-analytic code called Galacticus, by Andrew Benson of Caltech.  He presented on an HDF5 format for merger trees which is quite interesting, and certainly something I think we should pursue implementing.

http://www.ctcp.caltech.edu/galacticus/MergerTreeFileFormat.pdf

I didn't see the presentation, so I'm wondering how exactly this is better than a SQL database for storing *relational* data? I agree that storing the particle data in the SQL database, for example, is not good, but it seems to me that HDF5 is not ideal for what SQL is designed for.

 Stephen Skory stephenskory@yahoo.com http://stephenskory.com/ 510.621.3687 (google voice) _______________________________________________ Yt-dev mailing list Yt-dev@lists.spacepope.org http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org