Management and storage of in situ oceanographic data: An ECM-based approach

Management of scientific data poses a number of challenging problems involving both procedures and tools, and the field of oceanography makes no exception. During oceanographic cruises, significant amounts of heterogeneous data are collected by means of a wide variety of measuring devices, and the sequences of registered values mostly come as plain text files. Each instrument has its own data format. Raw data parsed from the acquisition files undergo some preliminary processing phases and, at the end, in the form of refined data, they can be considered ready to be kept as actual descriptions of the observed phenomena. This paper, based on experiences carried out in an oceanographic research center, describes problems and possible architectural solutions in managing heterogeneous oceanographic data from collection up to proper repositories. It is shown how a careful employment of ECM (Enterprise Content Management) systems may be beneficial in this setting, with no need to adopt complex ad hoc solutions that are difficult to maintain by personnel not specifically skilled in data-handling techniques. A data model to support the storage of refined data in structured repositories is developed as well. It is well-known that database technology is not pervasive yet in the scientific community, as it already is in other areas. The proper concerted use of ECM, DBMS, and possibly scientific workflow frameworks may represent the means to enable an effective adoption and a fruitful exploitation of the existing database technology also in the field of oceanography. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.