This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Retrieving Felix Grant tackles data retrieval challenges


erhaps the most famous data retrieval case in the history of science comes from 16th century orbital mechanics. Copernicus had laid the foundations


for a viable heliocentric system; Kepler stood ready to finalise it. Between the two, both problem and solution, lay the mysteries of Mars, ‘the wanderer planet’. Te data that Kepler needed already existed, in a database of naked eye observations painstakingly constructed over two decades by Danish philosopher Tycho Brahe. Te problem was twofold. Brahe had


nailed his colours to a mixed system at odds with that of Copernicus; and his data was his claim to posterity. He employed Kepler as an assistant, but jealously guarded access to the full observational data set. Kepler did, eventually, gain access to the


data. It wasn’t easy, nor always amicable (though allegations that he murdered Brahe to achieve it have been discounted) – but it was done. He still had to learn how to retrieve it productively, but six years of mining and analysis finally bridged the gap to produce a final, successful, validated model. Tings have changed almost


unrecognisably over the four or five centuries since Copernicus, Kepler and Brahe, but some features recognisably remain amid the new. Investment in research is balanced against the advantages of shared access. Boundaries, proprietary or otherwise, remain between researchers and data repositories. Murder and less extreme espionage methods may be rare (though not unheard of) as means of gaining access to data stores, but Kepler would no doubt recognise in essence the processes of negotiation and persuasion that allow those boundaries to be permeated. Te biggest early 21st century data


retrieval issue, however, is a different one. Acquisition in large quantity is becoming ever easier. Storage is, in relative terms,


10 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD DIGITAL


INFORMATION CAN SOMETIMES BE HARDER TO REACH THAN OLDER ANALOGUE STORES


becoming cheaper. Te headache oſten becomes how to ensure that one retrieves the right data for particular purposes from the ever-ballooning volumes that are thus becoming available. And then there is the problem of storage


format obsolescence. Unlikely as it may seem, digital information which is by definition recent and (you might think) ought to be more easily accessible, and


more carefully curated, can sometimes be harder to reach than older analogue stores. Reusing information aſter it has passed its initial shelf life is a bigger issue than it ought to be. As a recent case of my own shows (see box ‘Retrieving the recent past’), multiple rapidly changing factors combine to deny retrievability remarkably quickly and opaquely. Te most future-proof data storage option is probably plain text CSV (comma separated value) files, stored online; but even that is not guaranteed, and frequent review is the only certain guarantee of posterity. Methods to provide transparent access to contemporary but incompatible databases (as described below) also suggest ways to retain access to older ones as new developments occur.


@scwmagazine l www.scientific-computing.com


data day queries P


Pedro Miguel Sousa/Shutterstock.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36