Data archiving in experimental physics

In experimental physics, data is archived from a wide variety of sources and used for a wide variety of purposes. In each of these environments, trade-offs are made between data storage rate, data availability, and retrieval rate. This paper presents archive alternatives in EPICS, the overall archiver design and details on the data collection and retrieval requirements, performance studies, design choices, design alternatives, and measurements made on the beta version of the archiver.