4.5 Archive types

Hierarchical, aggregated data can be archived using the Open Archival Information System standard, which defines information packages (SIP, stands for submitted information package) to load data into the archive system.

A SIP package is a zip file, which contains:

• an XML file holding aggregated data records
• an XML manifest file describing metadata, for example:
  • production date
  • producer
  • application
  • record count
  • retention date
• … and optionally unstructured (binary) documents, like PDF, images... etc

Non-aggregated (for example relational) data can also be serialized as XML (see example 4) and store in an archive. For simplicity let’s call it “table archive”.

Archive types:

• SIP
• table

Both types can also refer to unstructured content files.

Data is archived into archive applications. An archive application can hold either SIP or table data. An archive system can host several archive applications.