The Genomedata format for storing large-scale functional genomics data.

Hoffman MM, Buske OJ, Noble WS.
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England). 2010 Jun 1;26(11):1458-9.
Abstract
SUMMARY: We present a format for efficient storage of multiple tracks of numeric data anchored to a genome. The format allows fast random access to hundreds of gigabytes of data, while retaining a small disk space footprint. We have also developed utilities to load data into this format. We show that retrieving data from this format is more than 2900 times faster than a naive approach using wiggle files. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Reference implementation in Python and C components available at http://noble.gs.washington.edu/proj/genomedata/ under the GNU General Public License.