Revolutionising data management technology

Thanks to EU funding, the 'CRISTAL-ISE: Discovering and managing eBusiness collaborations' (CRISTAL-ISE) project is enhancing the software platform that was first created at CERN in the late 1990s. When released, the new version will have a wide variety of potential uses outside of particle physics, including medicine, manufacturing, engineering and logistics.

The project is based around secondments. The early-stage researchers are developing and contributing to an improved version of the software known as Cooperative Repositories and Information System for Tracking Assembly Lifecycles (CRISTAL).

CRISTAL is designed to handle the complexity of data-intensive systems. It also provides the flexibility to adapt to the changing scenarios of any production management system or any process where workflow and data traceability is crucial.

During the first two years of the project, team members released an open source version of CRISTAL that tracks all types of information. In addition, it enables other research projects or businesses to freely use it and tweak the source code. This will lead to further enhancements and more flexibility. Large-scale projects with rapidly evolving workflows can benefit from using CRISTAL.

Collaborative research, knowledge exchange, and secondments from academia and industry have resulted in the publication of six papers in various academic journals.

CRISTAL-ISE outcomes are helping to introduce a new and improved workflow-driven application to map and manage data. The project is also fostering new strategic partnerships and wider participation with European software suppliers and users. Technology developed in the course of particle physics research will have applications far beyond the world of tracking detector components.