Experience with a run file archive using database technology

High Energy Physics experiments are known for their production of large amounts of data. Even small projects may have to manage several Giga Byte of event information. One possible solution for the management of this data is to use today`s technology to archive the raw data files in tertiary storage and build on-line catalogs which reference interesting data. This approach has been taken by the Gammas, Electrons and Muons (GEM) Collaboration for their evaluation of muon chamber technologies at the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory (SSCL). Several technologies were installed and tested during a 6 month period. Events produced were first recorded in the UNIX filesystem of the data acquisition system and then migrated to the Physics Detector Simulation Facility (PDSF) for long term storage. The software system makes use of a commercial relational database management system (SYBASE) and the Data Management System (DMS), a tape archival system developed at the SSCL. The components are distributed among several machines inside and outside PDSF. A Motif-based graphical user interface (GUI) enables physicists to retrieve interesting runs from the archive using the on-line database catalog.