Long term archiving of digital information

Abstract

Digital data is preserved by archiving on a removable medium. In the long term, the save data bit stream must be correctly interpreted. For a computer program or system to be archived, the bit stream constituting the program must be archived and the code must be executable at restore time. The program that restores the data does not “see” the contents of the data itself, but accesses it by issuing a function call to an executor. A description of which methods are available to restore the information hidden in the data is always available. A text tells the client which functions are available and what their purposes are. The archiving method is based on using a virtual computer instruction set and saving the algorithm as a program written int hat virtual machine language. For machine instructions to be executed many years later, for example 100 years, an emulator of the original machine would be written on the future hardware. Any machine manufactured in the originating year would develop for each architecture a Universal Virtual Computer (UVC) description of the machine. Each originating instruction would be mapped into a small program of UVC instructions. All manufacturers of new architectures would then have to write a UVC executor which would be able to execute UVC instructions on the machine running 100 years in the future.