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Currently a small fraction of the anticipated data formats is implemented by 
ESMF.  The data I/O uses NetCDF and MPI\_IO binary formats, and ESMF Attribute
I/O uses XML format.  Different libraries are employed for these
different formats.  In future development, a more centralized I/O technique
will likely be defined to provide efficient utilities with a set of standard
APIs that will allow manipulation of multiple standard formats.  Also, the 
ability to automatically detect file formats at runtime will be developed.
