ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

OPeNDAP

Okay, imagine you have a bunch of different toys, like Lego blocks, dolls, and cars. They're all really fun to play with, but they all have different pieces and pieces that don't fit together. It's like they speak different languages and can't understand each other.

Now imagine that you want to put all of your toys together and make a big playset. How can you do that?

Well, that's kind of what scientists and researchers have to do with their data. They might have data about the weather, the ocean, or the atmosphere, but it's all stored in different formats. It's like it's all in different languages and they can't understand each other.

That's where OpenDAP comes in. OpenDAP is like a translator for data. It helps scientists and researchers take data from different sources and put them all together in one big dataset. It's like taking all your toys and putting them together to make a huge playset.

OpenDAP is really helpful because it lets scientists and researchers work with big datasets without having to spend a lot of time manually converting different data formats. It's like if you have the Lego blocks and the doll toys, you can use OpenDAP to help them all fit together properly.

So, in summary, OpenDAP is a tool that helps scientists and researchers take data from different sources and put them together in one big dataset, kind of like putting all your toys together to make a big playset.