Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2-1. The HDF5 library: blue represents components inside the HDF5 library;
green represents “client” code that calls into HDF5; gray represents resources provided
by the operating system.
For example, the HDF5
core
driver lets you use files that live entirely in memory and
are blazingly fast. The
family
driver lets you split a single file into regularly sized pieces.
And the
mpio
driver lets you access the same file from multiple parallel processes, using
the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library (
“MPI and Parallel HDF5” on page 119
). All
of this is transparent to code that works at the higher level of groups, datasets, and
attributes.
Setting Up
That's enough background material for now. Let's get started with Python! But
which
Python?
Python 2 or Python 3?
A big shift is under way in the Python community. Over the years, Python has accu‐
mulated a number of features and misfeatures that have been deemed undesirable. Ex‐
amples range from packages that use inconsistent naming conventions all the way to
deficiencies in how strings are handled. To address these issues, it was decided to launch
a new major version (Python 3) that would be freed from the “baggage” of old decisions
in the Python 2 line.
