HDF5 is a file format and a data access library used by a larger community, mainly outside fusion. HDF5 is used, for example, in earth science research, defence applications and weather services. HDF5 allows managing large and complex data sets and provides a common data format among heterogeneous applications.
Both MDSplus and HDF5 support a rich set of data types and a hierarchical data organization, as well as multi-language data access libraries. There are however several significant differences between the two system architectures, making each system better suited in different application contexts.
The paper provides a brief overview of the data architectures of MDSplus and HDF5 and analyzes in detail the peculiar aspects of the two systems.