1. Preserving electronic records from database-driven informationsystems Filip Boudrez ErpaWorkshop, Bern, 9 April 2003

2. 1.What to preserve (appraisal)? 2.Procedure: when? how? who? 3.Practical experiences and solutions 4.XML-preservation 5.Metadata TOC

3. Components of electronic records: –content –structure –context –presentation –behavior, functionality What gives a document the status of record? What’s necessary to reconstruct the record in the future? 1. What to preserve?

4. data logic tools all data? selection? reports? different versions? establishing the boundaries Each informationsystem consists of 3 layers: required for future access? appraisal:identification of the parts for transfer based on archival and technical criteria

5. PROCEDUREINSTRUMENT what? yes no demands / remove no archival value? informing 2. Procedure demands?

6. medium? format? transfer remove OK NOK validation testing CD’s inspection 2. Procedure

7. Cases: 1.election and population register 2.databases with webinterface 3.Geographic Information System (GIS) 3. Experiences & Solutions Solution: migration & XML preservation deep web: XML interaction: logfiles (pure text) interface: snapshot ((X)HTML) + browser maps: imagefiles (e.g. GeoTIFF, SVG) GIS-data: GML-documents versioning: history of the features

8. Why XML? –most appropriate preservation format for structured textual information –encapsulation of metadata –validation –several consultation/query options Migration process: –establishing the document model: DTD, XML Schema –dump/query –unload: EBCDIC  ASCII/Unicode (!!! diacritical characters) –adding XML-declaration and -tags 4. XML-preservation

9. logical question: translation of relational datamodel to hierarchical documentmodel practical issues: –file size: TB/GB  MB –lots of whitespace: preserve or remove? –illegal XML-characters: –preserved XML-characters (e.g. ?,, & ): replacing with entities –control characters (excep. Chr (10), Chr(13), Chr(32)): remove 4. XML-preservation

10.  … about the data: using semantic XML-tags and nesting within the XML-documents  preserving information and structure  … about the informationsystem: preserving the context 5. Metadata XML-file

11. More information?