There are a few minimum format requirements to enable you systems to communicate with the OceanDataPortal Data Provider software.

Metadata is presented in XML format based on ISO 19115 standard and WMO Core Profile v.0.1. Now we are working to apply ISO 19xxx standard as a basic standard for all metadata records.

Data is presented in NetCDF format. Wikipedia: The data format is "self-describing". This means that there is a header which describes the layout of the rest of the file, in particular the data arrays, as well as arbitrary file metadata in the form of name/value attributes. The format is platform independent, with issues such as endianness being addressed in the software libraries. The data arrays are rectangular, not ragged, and stored in a simple and regular fashion that allows efficient subsetting.

More information on agreed formats inside Ocean Data Portal are available at www.oceandatastandards.org