The Universal Data Format (UDF) together with its set of core software and analysis programs form a powerful and comprehensive work environment under which Space Physics Data can be easily manipulated and displayed on a variety of levels. Under its umbrella diverse data sets can be combined for joint analysis and the existence of both an IDL and Tcl interface makes it simple to create case or data specific analysis tools. It is the purpose of this set of documentation to introduce the various aspects of the UDF and its supporting software on several levels.
Within this set of documentation can be found complete tutorials on the various applications available to analyze and display UDF data. There are tutorials on any number of management tools including how to update software, add new applications, add and delete data, set up a distributed archive site. A complete set of programmers manuals detail the C, IDL, and Tcl interfaces to the UDF. Finally there is a set of tutorials on how to translate arbitrary data sets into UDF. These include complete structual descriptions of the UDF file format.
If you are ready to begin and prefer not to peruse the introductory discriptions then the place to start is the section on