There are many popular data storage formats, and many more than that in use. In order to transmit data over the Internet, DODS must translate the data model used by a particular storage format into the data model used for transmission. The DODS data model consists of a fairly elementary set of base types, combined with an advanced set of constructs and operators that allows it to define data types of arbitrary complexity. This way, the DODS data access protocol can be used to transmit data from virtually any data storage format. These are the more complex data types that can be constructed from the simple base types.
Examples are structures, sequences, arrays, and grids.
Operators Access to data can be operationally defined with operators defined on the various data types. In order to transmit the data across the Internet, there needs to be a machine-independent definition of what the various data types look like. For example, the client and server need to agree on the most significant digit of a particular byte in the message These elements are defined in greater detail in the sections that follow.