Add 'From Zero to Zarr' beginner guide to the Zarr data model#4077
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Add 'From Zero to Zarr' beginner guide to the Zarr data model#4077chuckwondo wants to merge 2 commits into
chuckwondo wants to merge 2 commits into
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Adds a new user-guide page (docs/user-guide/data_model.md, nav label "Understanding Zarr") that explains the Zarr data model for newcomers: why Zarr exists (its parallel-computing origin in genomics), then arrays, chunking and the chunk grid, stores as key->bytes maps, metadata (zarr.json), the specification, codecs, sharding, groups, and N-D arrays, ending with a runnable round-trip example and a cross-language note. Prose + diagrams throughout, with executable, build-verified code in the final section, and every spec detail linked to its section of the Zarr v3 spec. Enables Mermaid diagrams via a pymdownx.superfences custom fence, and adds the page to the User Guide nav. Closes zarr-developers#4056 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
d-v-b
reviewed
Jun 18, 2026
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| Chunking is the key move. Each chunk can be stored, loaded, and compressed on its | ||
| own, so a program can read just the chunks it needs — that one corner your | ||
| colleague wanted — without touching the rest. (Starting with a chunk shape that |
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could we use an inline admonition for the partial-chunk callout? something like
Note
If each chunk has a fixed size, how can we use chunks to represent an array that isn't evenly divided by the chunk size? See #section for the answer to that question!
not sure if note is the right admonition here
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Adds a new user-guide page (docs/user-guide/data_model.md, nav label "Understanding Zarr") that explains the Zarr data model for newcomers: why Zarr exists (its parallel-computing origin in genomics), then arrays, chunking and the chunk grid, stores as key->bytes maps, metadata (zarr.json), the specification, codecs, sharding, groups, and N-D arrays, ending with a runnable round-trip example and a cross-language note. Prose
Enables Mermaid diagrams via a pymdownx.superfences custom fence, and adds the page to the User Guide nav.
Closes #4056
TODO:
docs/user-guide/*.mdchanges/