Webinar Recording: Long-term Preservation and Access to Databases

Databases and other forms of tabulated and structured data are commonplace in GxP settings, especially in laboratory (GLP) and manufacturing environments, for example for storing data and records collected by instruments and monitoring systems. This data needs to be retained under regulatory requirements and during that period it needs to remain accessible and usable, which is sometimes referred to as ‘dynamic data’.

It is not sufficient to export data and record it in a ‘paper like’ way, for example as PDF files. Instead, databases need to be retained in a way that allows their contents to be visualised, navigated, queried and searched, for example to allow verification that the data is what it purports to be, for checks to be made on its quality, and for its use in reconstruction of events from when it was originally captured. This presents many challenges when these databases are held in systems that become obsolete and need to be decommissioned and when the data is distributed across an estate of multiple sites, servers, and software applications. This webinar recording examined these challenges and the approaches to long-term database preservation and access.