The international phosphate resource data base; development and maintenance
Nancy J. Bridges · Antarctica A Keystone in a Changing World · 1983
The IPRDB (International Phosphate Resource Data Base) was developed to provide a single computerized source of geologic information about phosphate deposits worldwide.It is expected that this data base will encourage more thorough scientific analyses of phosphate deposits and assessments of undiscovered phosphate resources, and that methods of data collection and storage will be streamlined.Because the database was intended to serve as a repository for diverse and detailed data, a large amount of the early research effort was devoted to the design and development of the system.To date (1982), the file remains incomplete.All development work and file maintenance work on IPRDB was suspended as of October 1, 1982; this paper is intended to document the steps taken up to that date.The computer programs listed in the appendices were written specifically for the IPRDB phosbib file and are of limited future use.effective methods available at the time, but were chosen because they facilitated data entry and insured early completion of the file, both being factors of overriding concern. CREATION OF PHOSBIBInitially, each AGI data tape was read into a separate disk file.Once entered, the tape format was reviewed.All records were separated into three basic parts: the record leader, the record directory, and the data fields.Each record leader contains a fixed length field specifying basic information about the record, including information on record length and base address.Each record directory is a variable length field made up of groups of information identifiers, length of the information, and starting position of the information.This identifies the type of data to follow, the number of characters it occupies, and the starting character position of the data within the record.The data fields contain the actual data that make up the bibliographic reference.The UNISIST Reference Manual (Martin, 1974) provides a detailed explanation of the tagging scheme and the actual formatting of the different data fields.UNISIST and AGI (AGI, 1977) both use several special codes to designate data fields, subfields or notation for special characters.Not all of these codes were acceptable to GRASP.Several unacceptable character codes had to be changed.AGI uses the octal characters o012, oOll, and oOlO to denote the beginning and ending of subscripts and superscripts.All of these characters were changed to o007 using the text-editor "teco".Since the octal character o012 denotes a newline, care had to be taken to delete the character only where it was used as the start of a subscripted string.The basic information in all of these bibliographic references was not sufficient to meet the intended use of the IPRDB phosbib file.Each reference was reviewed and a list of keywords added to allow for easier grouping of the information when retrievals were run in GRASP.The computer program AGI_READ.PL1 (Appendix A) was written to accept the keyword data.The program reads the bibliographic reference, prints out the basic reference, and then prompts for the input of the appropriate keywords.It creates a separate disk file containing the keyword information.This file can then be edited using programs written for that purpose.A listing of each of these programs is contained in Appendix B. In all of these programs the old keywords file must be deleted and the newly created keywords2 file renamed to keywords after running the program.Once the keyword file was ready, a program to incorporate the keyword data with the original GeoRef information was required.Since some of the data included in the GeoRef tapes were not suitable for use in phosbib, a program was needed to sort out all unnecessary information.Phosbib f s organization is slightly different from the GeoRef file; therefore, several GeoRef variables had to be deleted or combined to make a single variable for entry into phosbib.The program BIBLIO.PL1 (Appendix C) executed these steps.It requires the user to define the datafile georef_data before running the program.OTHER IPRDB DATA FILES Data structures have been developed for the main occurrence file, the stratigraphic section file, and the resource file.The geochemical analysis file is to be a subset of RASS (Rock Analysis Storage System).No information has ever been gathered so these files are as yet non-existent.Appendix G contains a detailed description of the variables and structure agreed on for the occurrence file.SUMMARY It is hoped that sometime in the future the total IPRDB data system will be completed.At such time as work on the system is resumed, this document is intended to provide background on the development and status of the system, The data currently stored in the phosbib file has been archived in the Branch of Resource Analysis private disk pack.Inquiry concerning the retrieval of data should be directed to the author of this paper through the Denver branch office.