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Government, specifically the US Federal, State and Local
Government is challenged with a requirement to preserve information for the
duration of the Republic (more information on electronic archiving and
discovery is at www.estorian.com). The
duration of the Republic already spans hundreds of years. The first 175
years stored the Republics business on paper. However, since the 1950's
new types of storage media have emerged. That media maintains the
historical audio, video and text of the Republic. It is incumbent upon
the US Government to make that history available, as needed, to the constituents
of the United States of
America.
Accessing the history of any department within a branch of government can seem
trying at times. For example, the technology used by the Office of the
President required end users to decide which emails were necessary for long
term preservation, as opposed to storing all of the data, regardless of
personal interpretation. Therefore, accessing the unabridged version of
the email records for the Republics highest office was hampered by user precision
and recall, not technology. Where precision represents the number of
correct hits in a return set of specified length; recall represents the number
of correct returns relative to the total number of possible correct
returns. Specifically, deciding which emails should and shouldn't be kept
for long term retention is best left up to software and open records managers.
In order for a manager who is responding to a Federal Open Information Act
(FOIA) request to find data, the data must be stored in an open format.
Open formats are critical for all agencies within the Government, because they
never know when data may be requested. If the data is proprietary and the
request is 50 years from now, it's possible the developer or the data-type is
long retired or deceased. Therefore, accessing the data may become
impossible, unless a computer with the right software is under maintenance at The Smithsonian.
If you are using Estorian LookingGlass
you can be assured that your data is accessible. Data accessibility is
maintained by LookingGlass Spherical
Indexing solution, which is based on open format SQL queries.
LookingGlass takes a standard approach to storing the data within an open
storage system, such as NetApp NAS or Permabit
Enterprise Archiving. The standard data approach, used by most of the
vendors supporting an archive, is to take the Microsoft MSG files and store them
in collections of ZIP files.
The Microsoft MSG files are the Message file data-type created by Microsoft
Outlook. Granted, the data-type may have been created by Microsoft, but
it has been in use for over 13 years. Specifically, Microsoft MSG files were
introduced when Microsoft released Windows 95 Preview Program (April
1995). Since then, thousands of developers have been manipulating and
managing MSG files, it is well known and can be considered a de facto
standard. Individual MSG files are a suitable format for email and email
meta-data, but billions of immutable MSG files create a performance and storage
challenge for all systems.
To address the issue of backing up millions of individual MSG files,
LookingGlass incorporates standard zip file support in to the storing of its
archived email. The ZIP file format, made popular by Phil Katz (d. 2000) was
released into the open format in 1989. Despite Mr. Katz death, the open
format creates assurances the data type will continue to be supported within
LookingGlass well in to the future.
LookingGlass data storage access is predicated on open access and data
ownership by its customers. As citizens of the Republic, we should pledge
allegiance to open formats that ensure future generations' access to the
present history that defines their conditions. LookingGlass provides
assurances to that access through the confluence of Spherical Indexing, MSG
file's and ZIP technology. LookingGlass will provide our Federal, State
and Local Governments the open access they need to support the open records
acts well into the future. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
