The HMC NEON clinic team has designed, prototyped, and delivered a Common Data Services (CDS) subsystem for NEON. Through a single language and a single file format, CDS offers programmatic access both to NEON’s central database and its many peripheral datasources. CDS is a software layer with which NEON engineers can create a wide variety of end-user applications for visualizing and analyzing ecological data. CDS’s design provides NEON the flexibility to incorporate new data sources and functionality in the future.