Data Management Tools.

Ridley, M. N. ; Stoker, C.

Technical Information Center Oak Ridge Tennessee

关键词: Data management systems;    Data management;    Data collection;    Data processing;    Documentation;   

RP-ID  :  DE200415007236

学科分类：工程和技术（综合）

美国|英语

来源: National Technical Reports Library

【 摘 要 】

What is data management (DM) and why is it important. As described in the 'Handbook of Data Management' (Thuraisingham, 1998), data management is the process of understanding the data needs of an organization and making the data available to support the operations of the organization. The ultimate goal of data management is to provide the seamless access and fusion of massive amounts of data, information, and knowledge in a heterogeneous and real-time environment, and to support the functions and decision making processes of an organization. The important questions that need to be asked for proper data management are: who is going to be using the data, what types of data need to be stored, and how will this data be accessed. With these questions answered, the data management system (DMS) can then be created, or an existing system can be modified to meet the needs of the organization. The real importance of a data management system is to provide the end user with a consistent data set of known quality. The elements of a good data management system should include a system that: is modeled to how the data is collected and processed, is very well documented, has specifically defined data elements, and has supporting data documentation. Supporting documentation includes items like quality control (QC) data that is carried with the analytical data, and meta data (information about the data). Supporting documentation can be anything that is useful to the project and that needs to be accessed with the data. Data sets get better the more they are used. As errors and inconsistencies are identified and corrected, the data set improves. A good DMS will achieve this because its design promotes use, and the ultimate value of data is in its use rather than its storage. The development and use of Internet access tools, and existing environmental data management systems, can help reduce the effort and cost associated with setting up a DMS. This presentation will discuss the qualities of a good data management system and provide examples.