The EDX package is composed by the following components:
1) the Electromagnetic Markup Language (EML) based on XML. The key idea is that a single data entity, the variable, is sufficient to the static representation of data stored into files.
For example, an electromagnetic field sampled on a plane at multiple frequencies can be represented as:
Component E (complex, dimension=3, unit=V/m)
Component H (complex, dimension=3, unit=A/m)
2) the Electromagnetic Data Dictionaries (EDDs) that contain and define the 'words' to be used to describe the physical entities, e.g. the electromagnetic field, for which data are stored in a file.
It establishes the precise meaning of the data, how they are represented numerically and the conventions adopted.
Here an sketch of how a physical quantity is represented in an EDX Data Dictionary:
3) the EDI Software Library providing all functions required to access data. The Electromagnetic Data Interface (EDI) is a lightweight library (a few thousands lines) written in C++ and equipped with application programming interfaces in C++, FORTRAN90 and MATLAB®.
Finally, the EDX Companion Tools have been developed to ease the use of the EDX:
· a data browser and visualisation tool
· a validation tool for EDX implementations
· a Matlab® Generic Data Dictionary interface.