Data Management SIG
Background Information

Description and Purpose

The purpose of the Data Management SIG is to conduct collaborative dialogue among the active participants, to find consensus requirements, and to advocate good practices, improved solution products and services, and improved industry standards in the domain of the use, storage, and management of E&P data and information. 

Therefore, the kinds of consensus requirements generated by this SIG will include: 

• endorsement of existing or advocacy for the creation of consistent reference data value standards; for example, Data Management products should support ISO 2-character country codes, should support POSC Epicentre well status classes, etc.
• endorsement of existing or advocacy for the creation of consistent identification standards; for example, Data Management products should support a global unique well identification standard to be codified via POSC and manifest in designated regional data repositories.
• endorsement of existing or advocacy for the creation of limited data model (structure and semantic) fragments; for example, Data Management products should support the explicit modeling of well data as it relates to wellbore data as expressed in POSC Epicentre.

References to existing or descriptions of desired industry standards may refer to any industry standards or any industry standards group. 

All formal references to solution products and services, and their features, will be made in a vendor-neutral, product-neutral manner using a reference architecture that defines commonly understood terminology for solution functions and components.

The motivation for establishing this SIG was based on the collective industry experience over many years of seeing increasing needs for data movement among data bases, systems, and organizations and of seeing the positive effects from the consistent use of standards-based terms, value sets, and modeling fragments across solution products. 

History 

• This SIG was formed in the middle of 2002.
• The SIG published the 2002 Recommendations Document, a prioritized set of five recommended industry standards activities,  in early 2003 addressing these subjects: 
  • E&P Cataloguing Standards for digital data and documents
  • E&P Reference Data Standards -- adoption and promotion
  • E&P Project Archive Data Standards
  • E&P Data Exchange Standards Directory
  • E&P Previewing Data Standards
• During 2003, the SIG selected a small number of Reference Data Standards for review based on the criteria of high importance. Change proposals for improvement were solicited. The Reference Data Standards are
  • Currency,
  • Country,
  • Well Elevation,
  • Well Fluid Type,
  • Well Naming Systems,
  • Well Purpose Types, and
  • Well Status Types.

Access to SIG Material

• 2002 Recommendations Document
  • Management Summary
  • 2002 Recommendations Document in A4 Format (PDF)
  • 2002 Recommendations Document in USL Format (PDF)
• 2003 Reference Data Standards Review 
  • Selected Reference Data Standards in A4 Format (PDF)
  • Selected Reference Data Standards in USL Format (PDF)

SIG Guidelines and Limitations

• focus on business activities that users agree should be described and carried out in a non-competitive manner
• focus on consistent aspects of business activities that will contribute to individual company and overall quality and productivity improvements
• ensure effective dialogue among participants
• ensure equal access to the consensus results
• ensure time effective publication of results
• seek participation by qualified experts in each subject area 
• seek to move industry standards to be more usable and solution products and services to be more standards-based within non-competitive areas
• define consensus requirements, but do not define specifications leaving that to designated standards development processes (inside POSC and elsewhere)
• consider sponsorship of pilot implementations to test concepts under consideration  

Shell's Statement (May 2002)

In support of the formation of this SIG, Shell offers the following comment:

"While the costs of information technology have fallen dramatically and the sophistication of database and application technology (relational, spatial, object, and now XML) has increased dramatically, the industry as a whole struggles with data management work practices. Data and information are in many formats -- raw original measurement data, interpreted data, documents, etc.

Today's applications still lock their data in isolated stores; though exchange standards exist, they are mainly based on one process model: data export / import between data stores for a limited number of data types.

Well-publicized studies have shown that there are untapped potential efficiency gains to be had by improving techniques for and practices in data quality assurance and control, data availability and access, and better integration with applications.

There are emerging tools in the market targeted at data management, e.g., Web-based data browsers and the Data Service Provider model, National Data Repositories -- data libraries based on entitlements. The lack of data management deployment and usage standards inhibits the development and deployment of commercial off-the-shelf systems, and realizing the associated potential efficiency gains." 

Call for Participation

Potential participants and interested parties are asked to contact Alan Doniger at +1 713 267 5124 or Doniger@posc.org.

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