A postscript version of this document is available. You may also use anonymous ftp to access postscript files of all of the DODS documentation. The Distributed Oceanographic Data System  is a system that allows you to access data over the internet, from programs that weren't originally designed for that purpose, as well as some that were. With DODS, you access data using a URL, just like a URL you would use to access a web page. However, before you request any data, you need to know how to request it in a form your browser can handle.
DODS data is stored in binary form, and by default, it is transmitted that way, too.
The other problem with a DODS URL is that a single URL might point to an archive containing 50 megabytes of data. You rarely want to request the whole thing without knowing a little about it. DODS provides sophisticated sub-sampling capabilities, but you need to know a little bit about the data in order to use them. So here's what to do if someone gives you a raw URL, and says there's some DODS data on the other end.