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Data Archival: Unlocking Data in Old File Formats
New technologies have greatly simplified the process of creating and publishing information, but many worry that today’s data being archived electronically is in danger of no longer being viewable as rapid cycles of technology change quickly obsolete the software and hardware used to create the data.
A project between the UK National Archives and Microsoft has created a system that allows users to view hundreds of terabytes of data in the same application and format the data was originally authored. The system is based on Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 which can run many different Operating Systems, including many older ones, like Windows 95.
The National Archives repository consists of archived data stored in more than a 100 different file formats and occupies more than 580 terabytes of data. Rather than create a “museum of old computers”, the project provides an interface running on modern machines that allow users to call up and view documents with the original applications. The system is running off of data that has been archived to tape.
The first phase of the project allows users at the National Archives to view the historical documents in their original format. A later phase of the project would let users to access and view those same documents from the Internet.
Microsoft took the opportunity of the announcement of this project to also discuss their new Office 2007 file format called Open XML which was approved as a standard by Ecma International in December 2006.
