zarr

• 2025-08-06

  Beyond the default: a modern guide to raster compression

  Compression is a fundamental and increasingly critical part of modern data storage and processing. But compression is often naively miscategorized as a single processing step. A better understanding of the steps in compression pipelines, the priciples behind them, and how to measure their effectiveness will enable us to move beyond the default compression settings and realize gains from more effective compression techniques.
• 2025-07-09

  Chunks and chunkability: an origin story

  Raster data formats are chunked internally, but the cloud has exposed these internal implementation details. We dig into the finer details of chunking to understand how chunking has become something tyrannical, dictating how we can and can’t access data efficiently. Part 2 of 2.
• 2025-07-09

  Chunks and chunkability: tyranny of the chunk

  Raster data formats are chunked internally, but the cloud has exposed these internal implementation details. We dig into the finer details of chunking to understand how chunking has become something tyrannical, dictating how we can and can’t access data efficiently. Part 1 of 2.
• 2025-05-22

  Is Zarr the new COG?

  We dig into the Zarr and COG raster formats to see if Zarr can and should now be a replacement for COG, and find a surprising answer.