## About the OPeNDAP DAP2 C++ Library Package

This package contains the OPeNDAP C++ implementation of the Data Access Protocol version 2 (DAP2) with some extensions that will be part of DAP3. Documentation for this software can be found on the OPeNDAP home page at `http://www.opendap.org/`. The NASA/ESE RFC which describes DAP2, implemented by the library, can be found at `http://www.esdswg.org/spg/rfc/ese-rfc-004`.

The DAP2 is used to provide a uniform way of accessing a variety of different types of data across the Internet. It was originally part of the DODS and then NVODS projects. The focus of those projects was access to Earth-Science data, so much of the software developed using the DAP2 to date has centered on that discipline. However, the DAP2 data model is very general (and similar to a modern structured programming language) so it can be applied to a wide variety of fields.

This package is required for many of the other Mac OS/X packages OPeNDAP has written. By default it will use `/usr` as the base directory for installation. If you change the default installation prefix, be sure to modify the PATH environment variable accordingly.