1. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Database Preservation: A success story and an unsolved problem Bill Roberts 23 March 2007 PresDB, Edinburgh

2. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Digital preservation: why is it hard? PEBKAC:

3. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 MeThem

4. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Databases: what to preserve? Contents of tables: the data Structure Semantics Context Business/scientific process www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/bibliotheek/docs/ volatility-permanence-databases-en.pdf OAIS representation information

5. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 JET data preservation Similar experimental processes repeated many times, 1983  Well defined format for processed data 2000: IBM mainframe  Unix (~8 TB) New NetCDF/XDR file format + relational metadata database Old API still supported All data still accessible Fusion Engineering and Design, Volume 60, Issue 3, June 2002, 333-339. Richard Layne and Martin Wheatley

6. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Why a success? Single organisation Small number of formats Carefully designed from the start Continuously managed Still in active use Data curators part of user community MeThem

7. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Multinational company data Regulatory IP protection Litigation Knowledge Office documents Instrument data Records of experiments Analysed data Regulatory submissions Lab notebooks Mostly in relational databases

8. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 “Easy vs Hard” Few activities Consistent approach Control of data formats Standardisation Record of data Many activities Rapid changes of science, technology, methods, formats, management Formats driven externally Freedom to innovate Trail of analysis and basis of decisions

9. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Solutions?

10. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Active Preservation Storage Archive Management Workflow Automation Characterisation tools Preservation action tools Planning tools Testbed

11. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 Data silos Representation information! ‘Merge’ the silos: Interoperability now between groups Interoperability between now and future

12. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 RECOMMENDATIONS: Design for data interoperability and re-use Consider whole life-cycle cost Automate metadata harvesting Make it easy for data creators to do the right thing

13. Bill Roberts, PresDB 07 bill.roberts@tessella.com www.tessella.com