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Multidimensional array 7.5.4.1
Requirement 41 reqCF-netCDF-1.6-DiscreteSamplingMultidimensionalArray: Any Multidimensional Array Feature Collection shall have both an Instance Dimension
and an Element Dimension.
Ragged array 7.5.4.2
Requirement 42 reqCF-netCDF-1.6-DiscreteSamplingRaggedArray: Any Ragged Array Feature Collection shall have a Sample Dimension.
In addition, the Sample Dimension is occupied by both an Instance Dimension and an Element Dimension.
7.5.5 Orthogonal multidimensional array representation
The Orthogonal Multidimensional Array representation is the simplest representation; it can be used if each Feature instance in the Collection has
identical Coordinates along the Element Dimension of the Features.
Requirement 43 reqCF-netCDF-1.6- DiscreteSamplingOrthogonalMultidimensionalArray: Any
Feature instance of
an Orthogonal Multidimensional Array Feature Collection shall have identical Coordinates along the Element Dimension.
7.5.6 Incomplete multidimensional array representation
The Incomplete Multidimensional Array representation can used if the features within a collection do not all have the same number of Elements, but
sufficient storage space is available to allocate the number of Elements required by the longest Feature to all Features. That is, Features that are shorter than the
longest Feature must be padded with missing values to bring all instances to the same storage size [16].
7.5.7 Contiguous ragged array representation
The Contiguous Ragged Array representation can be used only if the size of each Feature is known at the time that it is created [16].
In this representation, the Dataset contains a Count Variable, which must be of type integer and must have the Instance Dimension as its sole dimension. The
Count Variable contains the number of Elements that each Feature has.
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This representation and its Count Variable are identifiable by the presence of an attribute, sample_dimension, found on the Count Variable, which names the
Sample Dimension being counted.
Contiguous Ragged array 7.5.7.1
Requirement 44 reqCF-netCDF-1.6-DiscreteSamplingContiguousRaggedArray: Any Contiguous Ragged Array dataset shall have a Count Variable.
Contiguous ragged array sample dimension 7.5.7.2
Requirement 45 reqCF-netCDF-1.6- DiscreteSamplingContiguousRaggedArraySampleDimension: Any
Count
Variable shall define the attribute sample_dimension. In addition, the attribute
sample_dimension names the Sample Dimension being counted.
7.5.8 Indexed ragged array representation
