## 3.4 A Thumbnail Sketch of the Data Prompter Choices

Data Explorer File | This choice is for when you already have data stored in Data Explorer format, for example if you are using a filter which converts from another format to Data Explorer format.
CDF Format | This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports directly. An application programming interface can be obtained from the National Space Science Data Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
netCDF Format | This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports directly. An application programming interface for netCDF can be obtained from the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, Colorado.
HDF Format | This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports directly. HDF was created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Image File | Data Explorer directly imports TIFF, MIFF, GIF, and RGB format images.

Grid or Scattered File

This option allows you to specify a general array header which can describe a wide variety of formats of data. Data can be on a regular grid, a warped grid with positions explicitly specified, or scattered. The general array format can skip header lines and embedded descriptive text. Data can be multidimensional, multivariable, and series (see 5.1 , "General Array Importer").

Spreadsheet Format file

This option is typically used for non-spatial data, for example the output of a spreadsheet program which might look like:

          Customer       Sales        Profit
          company_a       1.2           938
          company_b       8.9          1037
              .            .             .
              .            .             .
              .            .             .

See ImportSpreadsheet in IBM Visualization Data Explorer User's Reference.

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