“Dynamic” Data at BCO-DMO

Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)Shannon Rauch -- srauch@whoi.edu

Danie Kinkade -- dkinkade@whoi.eduESIP Winter Meeting 2015

Where is this use case located? (name, URL of a workbench providing access to the data)

Two (of many) examples:(1) CARIACO Time-Series - rows of data are added over time (i.e.

parameters measured are (usually) the same, but new data are added ~annually)http://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/3092

(2) (2) GEOTRACES aerosols - columns of data are added over time (i.e. new parameters are added to a dataset as analyses are completed; frequency of updates varies); corrections also made with variable frequencyhttp://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/3865

Data Characteristics: how much data is being collected, growing at which rate? Type: what type(s) of data are part of the use case? How is the data stored? Is some form of versioning in place? • ASCII, flat-files; several download options• When updates are made, the entire dataset is usually replaced

with the new version. Version dates manually recorded. • Historic versions are not available online. • Updates made relatively infrequently (1-2 times per year). • Metadata changes are time-stamped in Drupal; row-level

changes not time-stamped (no RDBMS)

Access: What infrastructure is used for accessing the data?• Data are accessed by a URL. • Drupal-based metadata content management system; data

objects retrieved on the fly (object-oriented system).• Most users download the entire dataset and sub-set on their

own machines.

Current citation approach: what is the current way for researchers to cite this data? (entire set, subsets, versions,...)• Researchers would need to cite the whole dataset, and should

include the dataset version date and date accessed/retrieved. • For some datasets , we work with the WHOI-MBL library to

assign DOIs (upon request by PI).