Concepts

How the format thinks, and why it is shaped this way. Read these when you want to know what the library guarantees rather than which call to make.

• Logical model: records, fields, axes, and coordinates.

• Dataset layout: roots, manifests, and hash-fanned objects on disk.

• Compatibility: what a reader accepts, and what a format change costs.

• Integrity: the four layers that verify a dataset, and what none of them catch.