3 Day Open Conference

Evaluating different data storage organizational approaches
Tuesday 18th November 2008
12.40 - 13.00
Auditorium 1

As microprocessors are getting faster, storage capacity larger, and data acquisition hardware cheaper, engineers are producing more test and simulation data than ever before. The more date that is collected, the easier engineers can find trends and correlations in their models and decrease the iterations in the product design cycle. However, in order to take advantage of the tremendous amounts of data that is being collected, engineers must have a data storage approach that allows them to easily retrieve and compare data across multiple tests. When creating the test or simulation application, forethought and planning should be put into designing a data management approach that will meet the needs of the current project as well as scale over time to easily integrate new test parameters. There are a number of elements to consider when designing a data management solution. First, engineers must decide on a scalable file format for recording data. This could include ASCII, Binary, XML, and/or a database. This paper will examine each of these formats and considerations to take into account before choosing a format for a particular application. Also, once stored in a format, engineers must decide how best to centralize, organize, and easily retrieve the data for postprocessing. This paper will also discuss several approaches for centralized data management. Finally, this paper will introduce new technology for creating a hybrid approach to data storage and management.

About the Speaker(s):

Caroline Bright
product manager
National Instruments


Caroline Bright graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Computer Engineering. She currently works for National Instruments as the Data Management Product Manager. In this role, Caroline works to educate industry on new data management techniques and best practices for file storage and data correlation.