Common Data Format (CDF) is a library and toolkit that was developed by the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA started in 1985. The software is an interface for the storage and manipulation of multi-dimensional data sets.[1]
"An Introduction to Distributed Visualization". CiteSeerX10.1.1.63.8349: ((cite web)): Missing or empty |url= (help) section 4.2 contains a comparison of CDF, HDF, and netCDF.