As many of you may know, the STORET database is undergoing some radical changes. Starting several years ago, the EPA has begun modernizing their system and cleaning up their data. As part of their modernization, they are moving their data storage from the present IBM mainframe into an Oracle database. When the conversion is complete, the data will be available via an interface on the Internet.
The data accessible from this new interface will come from two sources: Legacy Data Center and STORET Warehouse.
The Legacy Data Center contains of all of the data from the old mainframe. These data will be unmodified, meaning that no quality checks will be performed on them. They will be transfered as is. Because of a problem in the mainframe database, no data collected after 1998 can be stored on it. So, this database will have data only through 1998, and then only if the owning agencies have posted the data to the mainframe. This database will be maintained in Oracle.
The STORET Warehouse database will contain any data after 1998, as well as any data from before 1998 that the owning agency has converted to the new system. This conversion includes some significant quality control processing. Most agencies have started submitting data as of 1999, and have been examining and updating their older data for submission.
Currently, old data can still be retrieved from the mainframe using the old job control commands. Once the data have been migrated into the Legacy Database in Oracle, the mainframe will no longer be available and all data must come from the Oracle database via the Internet access.
As of now, early July, 2000, there is no public interface for accessing any of the Oracle data. Agencies have access to their own data on their own machines, but data on the central server are not available until the Internet interface is completed and tested. The EPA expects that its Internet interface will be released this winter.
Hydrosphere was in the process of obtaining a copy of all the data on the old mainframe when the EPA closed their mainframe access in March, 2000 in order to install a more secure interface. Access has been restored as of mid-May, but FTP capabilities for large file transfers are not yet enabled. Thus, we have to delay our retrieval of the legacy data until the FTP functionality is restored. As soon as we can get this legacy data, we will publish those data on our regional CD’s as before. Once the new STORET Warehouse data are available, we will be working to get access to it and to update our data products.