Using Xml for the Long-Term Storage of Datasets. Results and Expectations of the Xpast Project
Rutger Kramer, Annelies van Nispen · History and Computing · 2001
Because of the widespread digitization effort around the world, archives have become increasingly aware of the problems surrounding Digital Longevity. One of the goals of digitization – safe storage of volatile material – is being hindered by the problems surrounding long term storage of digital objects. The bitstreams themselves, as they are stored on CD or magnetic disk, slowly but steadily erode or fade in strength, requiring the need for a constant bitstream refresh policy. Mechanical failure of the storage devices can have devastating effects on the digital objects legibility. Even if the long term storage of the magnetic bitstream has been ensured, one is faced with the probability that the files represented by the bitstreams can no longer be interpreted correctly. A lot has been written about the problem of Digital Longevity and best practices for the long term storage of digital objects have been presented and applied. Apart from migration of the files to more recent formats and emulation of extinct applications and operating systems, XML has been presented as a possible approach to avoid the files from becoming an uninterpretable clump. Storing digital objects as XML files has been recognized as a real possibility for long term storage and access to the data they represent. However, the applicability of XML for different filetypes seems to be limited. If a researcher is interested in a specific publication, he may be helped with an XML representation of the publication, since XML can be applied very straightforward to document type files. XML is based on the use of characters, just like books and papers. But what to do with files that are not represented solely by characters such as datasets? Datasets contain characters, but also functionality such as relational links between separate tables. One of the main advantages