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Re: Archiving information within databases



Cheryl,
Sorry but I must respectfully disagree.  From a records management point of view
just having the data and producing something using the most current "software
out there" would not yield an authentic record usable in litigation.  However,
from an archival point of view I see other problems.  First the database
itself.  As Peter Kurilecz has pointed out, many of these databases are
extremely large.  In addition there is little or no compatibility between
database applications (e.g., SQL and Oracle).  Each database has proprietary
language used to set up the tables and translation from one database structure
to another is difficult and expensive.  First one would have to map the existing
database, somehow clean up the data errors that permeate any database and then
populate the correct fields in the new "non-proprietary database" with the old
data.  I'm also having trouble figuring out what a "non-proprietary database"
would be.  I guess you would have to write it in-house.  Given all that I still
don't see that one would have a record of use.  Having the database would seem
to me to be the same as if you had dumped the contents of a filing system into a
big box.  Yes, you have the individual pieces of paper but the structure of the
filing system and context (e.g., subject headings) are gone.  Now one can
develop all sorts of ways to parse these pieces of paper into categories but
that has nothing to do with the original order of the filing system and its
subunits.  YOU, as the database manipulator,  are constructing the "record" not
presenting the historical record for interpretation.  And, as I noted in my
previous post, you are still only working with the final state of the database
and have no longitudinal perspective on how it has changed.  I would still
rather have the "records" generated from the database across it history than the
final snapshot of the data as it existed at one (last) moment in time.  Dick
King, University of Arizona.

Cheryl Stadel-Bevans wrote:

> To return to Christian's original question, what is "record" in a database
> is the data itself. Without the data, there can be no reports, views, etc.
> If one can keep the underlying data in a non-proprietary format, then one
> can import the data into the latest software program out there if need be.

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