Unified Snapshots API, HDF5 Compression, Dataset-Specific Backend Configuration, fully supported Variable Encoding in ADIOS2, Chunk Distribution Strategies & Performance

This release unifies the Streaming API and the Random-Access File API into a unified Snapshots API, with improved support for lazy parsing. Filtering and compression features are now also available for HDF5 (previously only ADIOS2), configured via JSON/TOML. JSON/TOML configuration can now target individual datasets for an improved tuning of compression operations. Variable Encoding is now fully supported in ADIOS2 (one ADIOS2 step per Iteration), as an alternative for File Encoding (one file per Iteration). Advanced chunk distribution strategies are now available in the API and in openpmd-pipe for data organization in parallel read operations. Multiple performance optimizations have been added throughout.

Upgrade Guide: https://github.com/openPMD/openPMD-api/blob/0.17.0/NEWS.rst
Full Changelog: https://github.com/openPMD/openPMD-api/blob/0.17.0/CHANGELOG.rst

Thanks to @franzpoeschel, @ax3l, @BenWibking, @guj, @nischild and @ikbuibui for contributing to this release!

New Contributors

• @BenWibking made their first contribution in #1798
• @ikbuibui made their first contribution in #1828