CSP CHRONOS Compliance statement for ISO 14721:2003 (Open Archival Information System Reference Model) 2009 ikeep Ltd, Morgenstrasse 129, CH-3018 Bern, Switzerland (www.ikeep.com, info@ikeep.com) The international standard ISO 14721:2003 (Open Archival Information System Reference Model, http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf) is the only widely accepted reference model for long-term archiving of electronic data. The OAIS model is a functional standard, i.e. not an implementation standard, and does not adhere to a specific industry or application. The OAIS model was developed by NASA, the aerospace industry, and several national archives and libraries. It is maintained by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, which comprises over 30 research and industry organizations worldwide, and the OAIS is recommended by the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information. CHRONOS by german software manufacturer CSP (http://www.csp-sw.de/en/) is an enterprise solution to enable serious and highly scalable long-term archiving of relational databases for companies, organizations, science data centers, and public archives. The dependency of the data on original production environments is removed, but the original semantics, structure and integrity of the data is retained and preserved in an open text/xml-based format that does not require any database management system to maintain, access and retrieve archive data. CHRONOS can collectively maintain any number of database archives, and provide easy webbased access to any number of users from any location. CHRONOS is well suited for retirement and decommissioning of legacy database applications. In that scenario, a legacy database is archived once in CHRONOS, and then retired. Furthermore, CHRONOS supports continuous and incremental archiving, where data is archived from running production systems in a daily, weekly, monthly etc. schedule. CHRONOS can be integrated with the life cycle management (ILM) of production systems: Although the database schema of a production system may evolve over time, CHRONOS can incrementally extract data subsets in many subsequent archiving runs and yet ensure coherent and collective accessibility and manageability for all archived data. This is possible because of CHRONOS unique ability to detect, describe and manage the semantic and structural changes in the production database schema between any two subsequent executions of the archiving process. CHRONOS was designed to comply with ISO 1472 / OAIS Reference Model. Its software architecture has a clear separation between the OAIS functional building blocks of Ingest (to ingest the data from a database source into the archive), Archival Storage (to store and maintain data on the bit preservation level, independent of specific software), Data Management (to administer, manage and describe archives on the content level), and Access (to serve different user communities according to their needs). Page 1 of 5
CHRONOS implements all key elements of the OAIS model. The following figure locates CHRONOS key features within the OAIS model high-level overview. Page 2 of 5
CHRONOS INGEST has clearly defined processes and functions to transfer data from diverse database sources according to a defined contract (archiving configuration), and defined SIP format (SQL DDL/DML and text over JDBC connections). The process of archival Ingest is well documented, automatable, fully monitored, validated, auditable und re-traceable even years after the data was archived. produces uniquely identifiable Archival Information Packages (AIP) that are openly documented and self-contained in the OAIS sense, i.e. they also encapsulate all metadata required to access, use and understand the data in the long-term without dependencies on original producer systems or other specific software, even CHRONOS itself. The AIP are sets of text and XML files, encapsulated in ZIP containers. is able to discover data entities in the producer database system, supporting various database products, and let the user to constrain the scope of archiving to selected entities. In any case, CHRONOS ensures that only complete data tuples (with regard to referential intergrity) will be archived. processes can be fully automated after the archiving configuration has been defined. Furthermore, CHRONOS supports incremental archiving (accessions, series), i.e. multiple SIP from the same source system can be ingested periodically over days, months, or even years. CHRONOS ensures that all data in all accessions of the same database archive can be queried collectively, as one archive, even if the database schema in the production system was modified between subsequent accessions. CHRONOS ARCHIVAL STORAGE stores, validates and monitors archive data as self-contained AIP on the bit preservation level (using the simplest form, namely text and XML files). CHRONOS stores an manages the storage locations of all AIP. Proof of integrity is achieved by hash codes (or qualified signed timestamps) for each archive file, and each data records inside an archive file, validated on each file read operation. stores archival data independent of specific software and hardware, i.e. it provides access to the archival content without dependencies on specific software or hardware. Furthermore, CHRONOS is a true third tier archive that writes and reads the archival data without transformations via intermediate software systems. can store the AIP in any local or remote file system, on any file system based storage media, including read-only media such as DVD-R, for example. In that case, bit-level monitoring is performed on write/read operations, based on hash codes. Furthermore, CHRONOS provides adapters to store AIP files in so-called compliance storage systems that provide deep-level bit-level monitoring and self-healing, delete-protection, retention management, disaster site management, and hierarchical storage management (HSM). Current adapters include, for example EMC Centera, IBM DR550, Hitachi HDS HCAP, FAST LTA SilentCube, Oracle SAM FS HSM, Qstar HSM, Oracle Pillar Axiom. Page 3 of 5
CHRONOS ACCESS provides means to determine the existence of archival information, and to retrieve the information according to detailed search criteria. Human users are provided with easy and customizable access via any Web browser, and technical systems can access the CHRONOS archives via JDBC, SOAP Web Service, and Java RMI calls. enables immediate and authentic access after data ingest. In particular, it provides adhoc execution of standard SQL92 queries on the archives, based on the original database schema of the producer system the data was archived from. provides functions to transform the AIP (preserved in the archive) fully or partly into various presentation forms (Dissemination Information Packages DIP according to OAIS model). Thereby, it may serve diverse user needs, without being constraint to the original form of the AIP stored in the archive. In particular, CHRONOS integrates Open Source JasperReports framework to design and execute custom and arbitrarily complex search and report templates. This can be used to define user access according to archive policies and corporate presentation guidelines. The DIP generation is on-the-fly, thus can be adapted to future needs without changing the archival data. provides access control by means of user/role management, secure authentication, fine-grained access rights management, and access monitoring. CHRONOS DATA MANAGEMENT uniquely identifies all parts of an archive, and it provides means to manage and describe archive holdings, for example multiple archive inventory, archive part structure, retention periods, integrity information, and description by content, administrative and technical metadata. CHRONOS retention management provides audited purging of partial data when retention times expire. provides functions and metadata to retrieve files and data from Archival Storage upon request by users or systems in Access, for example context information, search indices and schema changes between accessions. stores integrity information on archive files and single data records using hash codes. As an option, qualified electronic timestamps and signatures may be used as well. Furthermore, to leverage data privacy, entire archives can be encrypted using open industry AES standards. CHRONOS ADMINISTRATION includes monitoring of archives and archiving jobs, configuration of new archives, and a system monitoring with e-mail notifications. An audit log repository traces all system activities and modifications, including ingest, storage and access. A self-archiving option lets CHRONOS automatically archive the audit repository database (e.g. daily). The authenticity and integrity of this audit archive is sealed with electronic signatures, thus reliable audit trails can be generated later, according to current audit requirements. Page 4 of 5
allows to fully automate ingest processes, and statistical data about archive holdings and user access can be gathered for management purposes. CHRONOS license price does neither depend on the archives data volume, nor on the number of users and user access queries. This prevents the archive management from uncontrollably growing costs as archive volumes grow over time. includes CHRONOS inherent ability of full disaster recovery of an archive solely from the AIP on the storage system or media, i.e. even when the entire CHRONOS software installation would be lost. In fact, this is an ingest feature also used to transfer an archive from one CHRONOS instance into another. Even when CHRONOS should become unavailable, the AIP can still be accessed and processed by standard tools like text editors, text search engines, and XML parsers. CHRONOS PRESERVARION PLANNING includes automatic export and restore of entire or partial archives into any database system, while CHRONOS detects and performs the necessary schema transformations in the background. This can be used to migrate or re-ingest archives or single archive parts. enables the organization to develop, adapt and verify its future archiving activities. This includes possibilities to extend the ingest to new DBMS products and versions in the future, and to adapt existing search and reports to future business needs. In particular, any new ingest configuration and migration scenario can be tested in advance, without affecting the existing archives. Page 5 of 5