Based upon past experience with other data sets, the decision was made that data file generation should be at the logical measurement level and not oriented to a physical instrument telemetry stream. The important user community is the space physics community. However, processed, theoretical and model data can also be handled easily in a self-consistent manner. This provides for the refinement of calibration factors and processing algorithms without having to reprocess the original data set and avoids the storage of many different unit values. In the IDFS format, data is classified as either scalar or vector.
Scalar data are singular data quantities that are dependent only upon time and position.
The vector data being returned may span the whole scan range or may encompass a subset of the scan range. Some of the vector IDFS data sources return data that has a functional dependence on dimensions other than the scan dimension. The IDFS paradigm handles data that can have additional dependencies on charge, mass, phi angle and theta angle. When one of these IDFS sources is selected, the data can be reduced to a 1-D vector quantity that is only dependent upon the scan parameter or to a scalar quantity. It contains parameters such as fields of view, geometry factors, etc.