4.3.2 DATA TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE INGEST FUNCTIONAL AREA

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Once the SIP is within the OAIS, its form and content may change. An OAIS is not always required to retain the information submitted to it in precisely the same format as in the SIP. Indeed, preserving the original information exactly as submitted may not be desirable. For example, the computer medium on which submitted images are recorded may become obsolete, and the images may need to be copied to a more modern medium. In addition, some types of information such as the unique identifier used to locate the Information Package within the OAIS will not be available to the Producer and must be input during the Ingest process to the OAIS.

The mapping between SIPs and AIPs is not one-to-one. Here are some examples:

– One SIP—One AIP: A government agency is ready to Archive its electronic records from the previous fiscal year. All of the year’s records are placed onto magnetic tapes that are submitted as one SIP. The Archive stores the tapes together as a single AIP.

– Many SIPs—One AIP: A satellite sensor makes observations of the Earth over a period of one year. Every week all of the latest sensor data are submitted to the Archive as a SIP. The Archive has a single AIP containing all of the sensor’s observations for the year. Ingest merges the Content Information from each weekly SIP into a specified file/files in Ingest persistent storage. The PDI data for the AIP is sent after the last sensor data for the year has been received. After all of the weekly SIPs and the SIP containing the PDI have arrived, Ingest processes the AIP.

– One SIP—Many AIPs: A company submits financial records to an Archive as one SIP. The Archive chooses to store this information as two AIPs: one that contains public information and the other that contains sensitive information. This makes it easier for the Archive to manage access to the information.

– Many SIPs—Many AIPs: An oil and gas company collects information on its wells. Every year it submits SIPs containing all of the well status information for one well to an Archive. The Archive maintains one AIP for each oil or gas field and breaks out the information on each well to the proper AIP based upon its geographic coordinates.

The ingest process transforms the SIPs received in the Data Submission Session into a set of AIPs and Package Descriptors which can be stored and accepted by the Archival Storage and Data Management functional entities. The complexity of this ingest process can vary greatly from OAIS to OAIS or from Producer to Producer within an OAIS. The simplest form of the process involves removing the Content Information, PDI and Package Descriptors from the Producer transfer media and queuing them for storage by the Archival Storage and Data

Management functional entities. In more complex cases, the PDI and Package Descriptors may have to be extracted from the Content Information or input by OAIS personnel during the ingest function; the encoding of the information objects or their allocation to files may have to be changed. In the most extreme case, the granularity of the Content Information may be changed, and the OAIS must generate new PDI and Package Descriptors reflecting the newly generated information objects. When many SIPs are required for the creation of one AIP, the Ingest functional area will provide temporary storage for the SIPs until all the SIPs required for the AIP arrive.

In addition, the Ingest Functional Entity will classify incoming information objects and determine in what existing collection or collections each object belongs and will create messages to update the appropriate Collections Descriptions after the AIPs are stored in Archival Storage. The OAIS and external organizations may provide additional Associated Descriptions and finding aids that allow alternative access paths to the information objects of interest. Researchers will develop new and fundamentally different access patterns to information objects. It is important that an OAIS’s Ingest and internal data models are sufficiently flexible to incorporate these new descriptions so the general user community can benefit from the research efforts. A good example of this type of new associated description is a phenomenology database in Earth Observation, which allows users to obtain data for a desired event, such as a hurricane or volcano eruption, from many instruments with a single query. It is important to note that such finding aids may become obsolete unless the data they require are preserved as parts of the AIPs they access.

It is expected that the Ingest Functional Entity will coordinate the updates between Data Management and Archival Storage and provide appropriate coordination and error recovery. The AIP should first be stored in Archival Storage. The confirmation of that operation will include a unique identification to retrieve that AIP from Storage. This identifier should be merged into the Package Description prior to the addition of the Collection Description to Data Management.


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