Is Zarr the new COG? Round 2!
We revisit the question: is Zarr the new COG? We review changes from the past
year and discuss the shrinking gap between the two data formats.
recent posts
- 2026-07-22
- 2026-03-18(Re)Making Cirrus: Three lessons learnedReflecting on five-plus years of building Cirrus, Element 84’s data orchestration framework, three core lessons emerge that apply to software projects generally: follow the money to understand what drives development, expect the pendulum of overcorrection and iteration, and hold fast to an unchanging vision. Part 2 of 2.
- 2026-02-23(Re)Making Cirrus: Reflections on five years spent building an open-source data orchestratorCirrus, Element 84’s open-source data orchestration framework, recently turned five years old — and we’ve rebuilt it at least three times along the way. This is a retrospective on where Cirrus came from, from its origins in NASA’s Cumulus through the STAC Workflows idea, the project CLI, the SWOOP detour, and finally the v1.0.0 release, plus a look at where it’s headed next.
- 2025-11-04Metadata makes the data format: metadata storage and representation across array formatsWhen configured equivalently, COG and Zarr store the exact same data bytes. So what actually distinguishes one raster format from another? Metadata. We get philosophical about what metadata even is, examine how TIFF and Zarr each represent it, tour the various ways geospatial coordinate information is encoded across formats, ask where metadata should live, and make the case that formal, versioned conventions are what truly enable interoperability.
- 2025-09-23Redefining cloud native with the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval ProtocolWhat happens if we question current assumptions around Cloud-Native Geospatial (CNG) and imagine what it could be if we were to redefine it with new technologies? The Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol (CCRP) is one idea born of this thinking, aiming to help make CNG more efficient and easier for both data consumers and producers.
recent presentations
- 2026-09-03
- 2026-09-03
- 2026-10-07
- 2026-11-02Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Vector Data workshopFOSS4G NA 2026 | Sacramento, CA, USA
- 2026-11-03Do formats exist? Towards a unified foundation for data tooling talkFOSS4G NA 2026 | Sacramento, CA, USA