Introduction

Espresso LTA (long term archive) is an optional add-on infrastructure for Espresso ELN. It continuously converts finalized ELN server experiments into PDF/A format and transfers them into a separate in-house server database which is meeting the requirements for application-independent and future-proof storage. The supplied free of charge LTA viewer tool allows to independently view, browse and search all experiment PDFs stored in this searchable archive.

Purpose of a Long Term Archive (LTA)

Nothing lives forever - and software is no exception. The storage of business-critical data in a future-proof and application independent manner therefore should be of high strategic concern. A Long Term Archive (LTA) is the key to such storage. It grants long-term data access by combining a data format and a storage platform required to be in wide use today, globally accepted, platform-independent and open-source.

In case of a disaster, an LTA will additionally serve as an independent read-only data backup, if it was continuously updated. Also, direct reports may access the data of their coworkers without the need to license the application originally creating them. And in case of Espresso LTA, the viewer tool even can serve as a free in-house reaction database query tool, due to its built-in reaction substructure search capabilities - all standalone and completely independent from Espresso ELN.

The Espresso LTA Implementation

Espresso LTA implements the LTA requirements as follows:

  • Data format requirement: The complete content of each experiment is stored as a PDF document, today’s de-facto standard for non-proprietary application and platform independent content. In particular, PDF/A-3b (ISO-19005-3) is utilized, a dedicated archival PDF specification also suited for embedded documents. The conformance of the generated PDF/A-3b documents can be verified using the open source tool VeraPDF by the VeraPDF consortium, or the fee-based Adobe Acrobat Pro software. 
  • Storage format requirement: The generated PDF/A-3b files are serialized and stored into a MySQL or MariaDB relational database, along with searchable metadata information. Both databases are forks of the same open-source software, available cross-platform and in wide use today. As relational databases they are designed for efficiently searching and storing large amounts of data.
  • Independent access requirement: A provided free of charge LTA viewer allows to browse and query these data completely independently from Espresso ELN. There's also the option to develop own viewers for querying the server database, based on the straightforward server database structure.

How to Set Up Espresso LTA

The LTA infrastructure consists of 3 main elements, which are available for download from the Espresso ELN download page:

  • LTA server package: This package contains a script for setting up the MySQL/MariaDB server database along with a detailed installation and usage guide containing the required technical details for setting up the LTA infrastructure. 
  • LTA Viewer: This freely available application allows to view, browse and query all experiment PDFs stored in the LTA.
  • ELN Admin Tool: From version 3.2.0 on, this freely available server administration tool supports the central specification and activation of the LTA functionality (please update to at least this version).

Espresso LTA is centrally controlled by ELN Admin Tool. ELN client users will not experience any difference in daily usage when activated, the archival processes run in the background and don't require user interaction. The only visible change is an additional status icon in the top-right corner of the ELN clients. 

Espresso LTA can be freely evaluated for a maximum of 150 archived experiments. Please contact ChemBytes to obtain a quote for the full version.