Preserving Transactional Data

Abstract

ForewordThe Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation, ensuring our members can deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services. It is a not-for-profit membership organization whose primary objective is to raise awareness of the importance of the preservation of digital material and the attendant strategic, cultural and technological issues. It supports its members through knowledge exchange, capacity building, assurance, advocacy and partnership. The DPC's vision is to make our digital memory accessible tomorrow.The DPC Technology Watch Reports identify, delineate, monitor and address topics that have a major bearing on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow. They provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with ensuring a robust digital memory, and they are of general interest to a wide and international audience with interests in computing, information management, collections management and technology. The reports are commissioned after consultation among DPC members about shared priorities and challenges; they are commissioned from experts; and they are thoroughly scrutinized by peers before being released. The authors are asked to provide reports that are informed, current, concise and balanced; that lower the barriers to participation in digital preservation; and that are of wide utility. The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the dissemination of good practice in digital preservation. Defining AbstractThis report tackles the requirements for preserving transactional data and the accompanying challenges facing companies and institutions that aim to re-use these data for analysis or research. Commissioned by the UK Data Service as part of their Big Data Network Support initiative, this report presents the issues and strategies which emphasize preservation practices that facilitate re-use and reproducibility. As with its companion report, Preserving Social Media, this publication explores the preservation concerns for novel forms of data. Transactional data -defined as any logical interaction with a database -challenge current approaches to long-term preservation. The scale and velocity of these data push current methods and tools for preserving databases to their limits. These data -from government data to environmental data -possess significant characteristics that require wider approaches to preservation. New approaches must consider an emergence of new uses for archived forms of these data. The meaning and value of these data derive not only from the raw content, but from the ways people interact with the technologies that create them. Through a range of use cases -examples of transactional data -the report describes the characteristics and difficulties of these 'big' data for long-term access. Based on overarching trends, this paper will demonstrate potential solutions for maintaining these data in a secure environment based on end user needs and regulatory frameworks....

Preserving Databases

“…Information held within databases can be volatile, meaning it is changed or updated frequently (Thomson, 2016).…”

“…Practitioners of database preservation may use simple text-based formats based on open standards, keeping the data vendor-neutral, transparent, and therefore more accessible whenever possible. (Thomson, 2016). The following table describes file formats that may be suitable for preservation and access in particular circumstances.…”

“…• Archaeology Data Service's Guide to Good Practice for Databases and Spreadsheets (2009). • DPC's Technology Watch Report, Preserving Transactional Data (Thomson, 2016).…”