Most of us are new to this.
Let's help each other out.

I had lots of tabular data that I wanted to serve via DODS.
What format shall I put my data into so that DODS can serve it?
Answer: netCDF

But the manual is thick and I'm short on time.
Answer: Wrap your data in CDL and convert it directly to netCDF using ncgen.

Here is the original data.
Here is the program I used to write the data wrapped in CDL tags.
Here is the data file in CDL.

netCDF Main Page
netCDF Documentation
netCDF software (binaries)

OK, Who can show me the equivalent process for a satellite image?