What is COMTRADE file?

When I joined a company with business area diverted from my current knowledge, I had to learn many new things and most of them is difficult. The electrical engineering terms, smart grid metaphors, and all those related to power supply. One of those is COMTRADE which I came to know about it while viewing on applications related to fault in electrical systems.

After a while, I found a site that share a very simple note on COMTRADE file and here is the gist of what I understand.
1. COMTRADE file is an IEEE standard file that stores information on signal within relays including fault.
2. 3 files: *.hdr (header file), *.dat (data file), *.cfg (configuration file)
3. Can be either binary or ascii format. The structures are the same


The complete article: Tutorial: Using COMTRADE Files for Relay Testing by Jay Gosalia & Dennis Tierney from Doble Engineering Company


A good sample to develop COMTRADE viewer using LabVIEW at https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-20321

Other links related to COMTRADE

1. http://www.wavewinbitronics.com/bitronicspro/bitronicsproviewer.html
2. http://matbasic.csc-soft.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&Itemid=71
3. http://www.softstuf.com/wwcomtrade.html
4. http://www.scribd.com/doc/23637992/34/COMTRADE-Common-Format-for-Transient-Data-Exchange