In order to make examples simpler to present, it helps to have hypothetical data files to refer to. I will assume the existence of several data files that I hope will be familiar to many readers. An ASCII version of each file is provided in the SDDS distribution package. This gives new users some data to ``play with'' in getting familiar with SDDS. These files are also used in several demonstration scripts provided in the package.
For each file, I've listed the names of the columns and parameters, and described each. I've given the data types in detail, even though only the distinction between numerical and nonnumerical data is relevant, just to emphasize that data types can be freely mixed. I've tried to include as little data as is necessary to make useful demonstrations, without simplifying so much as to be trivial.