# HDF5 Compound in ParaView

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/hdf5-compound-in-paraview/5206
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [August 28, 2020, 12:44am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/hdf5-compound-in-paraview/5206 "2020-08-28T00:44:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Bin\_Dong](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/bin_dong/32/4789_2.png) [@Bin\_Dong](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Bin_Dong)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2020, 12:44am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/hdf5-compound-in-paraview/5206/1 "2020-08-28T00:44:40Z")

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Hi ParaView Community,  
Just wonder does the ParaView can support HDF5 compound data structure ?  
A compound dataset is like the one created by the below code example

[https://fossies.org/linux/hdf5/examples/h5\_compound.c](https://fossies.org/linux/hdf5/examples/h5_compound.c)

Say we have a 2D data mesh, each mesh point has more than one attributes, x,y,…  
Instead of storing each attribute to a separate dataset in HDF5, we use the compound data structure to store them together. Major motivation is to reduce I/O cost.

Bests,  
Bin

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### Author: ![cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/cory.quammen/32/11193_2.png) [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2020, 2:47am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/hdf5-compound-in-paraview/5206/2 "2020-08-28T02:47:59Z")

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Welcome to ParaView, @Bin_Dong!

ParaView reads a variety of HDF5-based file formats, including formats that store multiple attributes for points all in a single file. The question is whether any of the readers support your particular HDF5 file structure - ParaView can’t understand arbitrary HDF5 formats without some knowledge of the structure in the file. That knowledge may be encoded in the reader itself, or in a meta format like XDMF.

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### Author: ![Bin\_Dong](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/bin_dong/32/4789_2.png) [@Bin\_Dong](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Bin_Dong)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2020, 5:28pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/hdf5-compound-in-paraview/5206/3 "2020-08-28T17:28:13Z")

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Hi Cory,  
Thanks for the response. Yes, it is true that reader code or the XDMF file deals with the file content of HDF5.  
Do you by chance have idea where I can find information about the reader or the XDMF file for HDF5?

Thanks.  
Bin