Dear Colleagues,

The MagIC Database Team announces the beta release of a new data model. While switching the database from Oracle to MongoDB (the new database is much faster and the software is open source), we took the opportunity to change the MagIC Data Model to a more orderly, hierarchical system. The 2.5 version of the data model has multiple tables dealing with the same type of data (i.e., er_sites and pmag_sites tables), the 3.0 version of the data model has only one table per level, far fewer columns, and most remaining column names remain the same. For a summary description of the new structure, see after the signature line.

We welcome comments and suggestions on the new data model.

If columns are missing that are necessary to store your data, please let us know and we can add them. The new MagIC Data Model and website will be going live before AGU. Look for an announcement of the beta release of the MagIC website and the switch over to the new data model. All datasets in MagIC at the time of the switch will be converted into the new data model by us.

You may be interested in attending a workshop sponsored by MagIC titled: "Earth's Magnetic Field from the Beginning" from Jan 24th-27th, 2017. We have 16 science talks planned over two days and then two days of discussion of the MagIC Database and the PmagPy paleomagnetic software suite. See the workshop website for details and the registration link.

Cheers,
Nick Jarboe (njarboe@ucsd.edu) and the MagIC Database Team

The MagIC Data Model 3.0 summary:

Contribution Table:
Information about the publication describing the data. Journal name, paper title, authors, etc.

Location Table:
Information on the locations in the study. Locations are of various types: Outcrop, Section, Village, Drill Site, Geographic Region (lat/lon rectangle), etc.

Sites Table:
Information on sites. A site is defined as a collection of samples whose measured properties are expected to be the same. The samples in a site should have the same age, paleomagnetic direction and paleomagnetic intensity. For example: a lava flow, a regional tuff, a (local) sediment horizon, a kiln.

Samples Table:
Information on individual objects removed from a site or created in the lab.

Specimens Table:
Parts of samples whose physical properties are measured.

Measurements Table:
Data from measuring physical properties of a specimen. This table can contain the lowest level information obtained from measuring properties of the specimen and the conditions under which it was measured. For example: the magnetic field of the sample along each axis, time/date of measurement, temp, external magnetic field, etc. Measurements can be grouped into experiments. A group of measurements on a specimen after different levels of demagnetization could be labeled with the same experiment name and used define the paleomagnetic field direction of the sample.

We also have three supporting tables for describing ages used in the paper, for recording passing criteria parameters, and for associating images with the paper (images, plots, videos, etc.).