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What is Scientific Data Management?

The official definition of Data Management (DM) provided by the Data Management Association (DAMA) is that "Data Resource Management is the development and execution of architectures, policies, practices and procedures that properly manage the full data lifecycle needs of an enterprise" (see also the Wikipedia definition). Or briefly: "Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource".

In contrast to DM definition and usage by commercial enterprises, Scientific Data Management (SDM) focuses and tailors DM techniques to scientific data resources management and adapts them to scientific research goals.

What you find here

Here I collected general material on Scientific Data Management (SDM) issues collected for a specific project, but I think those references could be of general interest.

  • First thing is an introduction to Scientific Data Management that contains a collection of ideas, existing solutions and definitions.
  • Then the project Scientific Data Bag (SDB), a lightweight method to add metadata to a set of heterogeneous datasets.

A real experience: DescEditor

DescEditor is a very simple database to keep track of the content of a directory tree. Each file has an attached description plus some other (user defined) metadata. The editor supports the manipulation of those descriptions.

DescEditor has its page and is freely available.