data silos

[sgt.null]

A mesh and field I/O library and scientific database

[sgt.null]

[sgt.null]

Silo is a library for reading and writing a wide variety of scientific data to binary, disk files. The files Silo produces and the data within them can be easily shared and exchanged between wholly independently developed applications running on disparate computing platforms. Consequently, Silo facilitates the development of general purpose tools for processing scientific data. One of the more popular tools that process Silo data files is the VisIt visualization tool.

Silo supports gridless (point) meshes, structured meshes, unstructured-zoo and unstructured-arbitrary-polyhedral meshes, block structured AMR meshes, constructive solid geometry (CSG) meshes, piecewise-constant (e.g. zone-centered) and piecewise-linear (e.g. node-centered) variables defined on the node, edge, face or volume elements of meshes as well as the decomposition of meshes into arbitrary subset hierarchies including materials and mixing materials. In addition, Silo supports a wide variety of other useful objects to address various scientific computing application needs. Although the Silo library is a serial library, it has some key features which enable it to be applied quite effectively and scalable in parallel.

Architecturally, the library is divided into two main pieces; an upper-level application programming interface (API) and a lower-level I/O implementation called a driver. Silo supports multiple I/O drivers, the two most common of which are the HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format 5) and PDB (Portable Data Base) drivers.

[aliantha]

Very pretty. And probably more than I wanted to know.

[sgt.null]

more stuff you do not want then?

[stonemaybe]

you been smoking again sarge?

[aliantha]

No, Stone. I mentioned in the Tank that at the Pentagon Metro station, there are a bunch of ads for private sector firms that are bidding on military contracts. One of the ads says, "Data Silo A, meet Data Silo B." I asked if anybody knew what it meant. Sarge looked it up.

[Dread Poet Jethro]

Data silos are
Are really nothing more than
An IT buzzword

Organizations
Compartmentalize info
Left hand, meet right hand

The idea is to
Break down the silos and share
Knowledge with whole firm

[aliantha]

Well, the Pentagon *is* all about buzzwords....

[sgt.null]

[sgt.null]

[Holsety]

Data silos are
Are really nothing more than
An IT buzzword

Organizations
Compartmentalize info
Left hand, meet right hand

The idea is to
Break down the silos and share
Knowledge with whole firm

Do you find yourself
Playing Kingdom of Loathing
From time to time, sir?

[sgt.null]

Heterogeneous data is usually generated by a combination of applications employed by enterprises to perform business processes. Legacy systems utilize multiple relational databases to provide applications with information and to manage data. However, a one-way distribution model between relational databases and applications creates data silos and results in the need to update the entire system "every night at midnight." This cumbersome process worked in the past because there was no alternative, but entrenching your business in legacy systems today is like investing in the stock market using quotes from last week's newspaper.

[mrsnull]

data-silos-leave-your-silos-and-follow-me

[sgt.null]

data-silos-leave-your-silos-and-follow-me