Development of Specialized Electronic Bibliographic Databases for Deep Ocean Hydrocarbon Production and Transportation

Summary

The primary objective of this research is to develop specialized electronic bibliographic databases containing diversified information required to optimize the production and transportation of deep ocean hydrocarbon resources under given environmental conditions.

To efficiently achieve the above objective, all the records (belonging to different specialized areas) have to be stored in a single location (MASTER database and thereafter grouped under different categories automatically by the developed microcomputer program.

It is assumed that this can be done by uniquely codifying (assigning one ore more ACRONYMS) each record according to its specialized area before storing it in the MASTER database, and thereafter instructing the system to group the records in each specialized area by sorting the MASTER database on the basis of the pre-defined ACRONYMS.

The developed program has to be tested to see if it does the grouping of records automatically as described above.

Further, the developed bibliographic database system has to be tested for consistency, reliability, speed of information retrieval, database protection, and overall performance so that the system can be used with minimal maintenance intervention.

Research Methodology
The objectives are accomplished by performing the following tasks:

1. Review of existing database environments and selection of an appropriate date database system. The selected database system out to have the following characteristics:
   • It can aid in faster information retrieval.
   • It is compact, easily transportable, and supports both DOS (3.0 and higher) and Windows (3.1) operating systems.
   • It can be run as a single-user and or multi-user system.
   • It is reliable and offers protection to the developed database system.
2. Review and identification of applicability of available general oceanic database sources for specialized areas.
3. Selection of groups of specialized access words to interrogate general databases to compile specialized bases.
4. Selection and prioritization of geographical areas to be included in databases.
5. Development of electronic databases to house the bibliographical information pertaining to specialized areas.
6. Development of a microcomputer program to maintain the databases and to generate reports as required by the user.
7. Testing of the developed microcomputer program to see if it automatically retrieves records from the MASTER database file and groups them into specialized databases.
8. Validation of the developed bibliographic database system by performing the following tests:
   • Consistency and Reliability Test;
   • Information Retrieval Test;
   • Database Security test;
   • Overall Performance Test.

Research Process
The steps undertaken to accomplish these tasks are:

1. Literature Survey and data acquisition: Literature survey was performed to obtain bibliographic data of r the database system to be developed, and to obtain information regarding the selection of an appropriate relational database system.
2. Data Analyses: The acquired bibliographic data from the literature survey is scrutinized to determine whether the data meet the following criteria:
   • Does the collected data belong to priority geographical areas?
   • Does the data pertain to water depths of 1000 to 3000 meters?

If the data satisfy the above criteria, they are codified and are ready to be stored in specific locations in the MASTER database. The exact process of codifying each record is explained. in detail, in Chapter IV Database Development, under the Section Codification.

1. Development and maintenance of databases: This step is the crux of the research program. The MASTER database is designed, and the computer program is developed to create and maintain specialized databases. The computer program was developed in dBASE IV to automatically create and maintain specialized databases from the MASTER database.
2. Validation of the developed databases: The developed specialized databases were validated by testing the developed system for information retrieval, consistency, reliability, protection, and overall performance, both as a single-user and a multi-user system.
3. Documentation: All the steps undertaken to perform the research and the research findings are documented to culminate in a report.