Common Data Language

Common Data Language (CDL) is a textual notation used to describe netCDF structure, including dimensions, variables, and attributes.

Because it is human-readable, CDL is useful for documenting dataset layout, reviewing metadata changes, and creating small example files for testing.

It serves as a bridge between machine-readable netCDF files and explicit schema-like communication about dataset structure.

See also: netCDF, UC2 data standard, Metadata