The Advanced Scientific Data Format (ASDF) is a next-generation interchange
format for scientific data. This package contains the Python implementation of
the ASDF Standard.

The ASDF format has the following features:
- A hierarchical, human-readable metadata format (implemented using YAML)
- Numerical arrays are stored as binary data blocks which can be memory mapped.
  Data blocks can optionally be compressed.
- The structure of the data can be automatically validated using schemas
  (implemented using JSON Schema)
- Native Python data types (numerical types, strings, dicts, lists) are
  serialized automatically
- ASDF can be extended to serialize custom data types