MatDB Online - A Standards-Based System for Preserving, Managing, and Exchanging Engineering Materials Test Data

With ICT Standards playing a key role in support of research and development in many disciplines, the European Commission Institute for Energy and Transport is keen to promote the development and adoption of ICT Standards for engineering data. In this respect, its MatDB Online facility is a Standards-based system for preserving, managing, and exchanging engineering materials test data. While MatDB Online has evolved over more than 30 years to incorporate the latest innovations in data preservation and exchange, such as XML-based data transfer and data citation using digital object identifiers, it continues to rely on a robust data model developed more than 30 years ago through the joint efforts of the National Research Institute for Metals (the predecessor to NIMS, the National Institute for Materials Science), the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While this data model has endured over many years, there is no corresponding Standard. Similarly, related efforts by the engineering materials community to deliver a Standard representation for engineering materials, such as MatML, have failed to be ratified. In consequence of the continued absence of a Standard representation for engineering materials data, there is no common mechanism for preserving and exchanging materials data and no formal means of maintaining a data model to support advances in materials technology, such as the emergence of nanomaterials. It is for these reasons that the European Commission Institute for Energy and Transport is supporting SERES, a CEN Workshop on Standards for Electronic Reporting in the Engineering Sector. As one of more than thirty organisations supporting the SERES Workshop, the Institute for Energy and Transport will make the MatDB XML schema available as one of several resources that will be taken into consideration when the prenormative Standard for representing engineering materials data is formulated. With the participation of the Institute for Energy and Transport in the SERES Workshop taking place in parallel with a related project with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there is good reason to expect that a Standard representation for engineering materials, which has so far eluded the materials community, will be realised. This paper describes MatDB support for engineering materials Standards and related innovative features.