SYMPOSIA PAPER Published: 01 January 1989
STP18622S

Information Systems Design for Material Properties Data

Source

Material properties data present numerous challenges that current data base management technology does not address. Major problems include data complexity, naming conventions, measurement units, summary levels of abstraction, and data sparseness. Networks and gateways to multiple material information systems compound these challenges and add others.

Experience from projects such as the Materials Information for Science and Technology (MIST) system prototype suggests several general approaches that address these problems, including modular system architecture; a three-tiered approach to naming materials, properties, and variables; an active data thesaurus; material and variable class hierarchies; structured representation of tables and graphs; and existence tables to indicate data availability by the cross product of materials, properties, and independent variables for any given data base. It also suggests that we need to go beyond the simple relational model to solve our problems and implement solutions.

Author Information

McCarthy, JL
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA
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Details
Developed by Committee: E49
Pages: 135–150
DOI: 10.1520/STP18622S
ISBN-EB: 978-0-8031-5078-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8031-1191-2