Accessing External Data on Local Media and Remote Servers Using a Highly Optimized File Reader Library

Abstract

is an open-source solution for the efficient interpolating access to external data sets. The library of C-functions can be used with different applications and works well with Modelica. Data sets can be easily accessed as continuous functions using different interpolation and extrapolation methods. The application range covers reading generated or measured data, the integration of simulation results from Modelica or other systems and the validation, parametrization and optimization of models using external data. Data sources may be local files or remote servers. Using the netCDF file format [2], the DAP network protocol [3] and different optimization approaches the data access can be surprisingly fast, even for large remote files with many variables containing millions of values.