Format

SIARD (Software-Independent Archiving of Relational Databases)

Summary

Name: SIARD (Software-Independent Archiving of Relational Databases)
Version: 1.0
Identifiers: PUID: fmt/161
Format type: Database
Disclosure: Full
Description: Software-Independent Archiving of Relational Databases is a format for storing content of relational databases in files for long-term preservation e.g. in archives. The format was developed by the Swiss Federal Archives. It is an open standard and is supported by the SIARD software of the Swiss Federal Archives. SIARD format is a ZIP file (based on the 64 bit extension of the ZIP format introduced by PkWare Inc. with version 4.5 of the ZIP format definition in order to avoid size limitations which are unrealistic for databases). The ZIP file contains an XML file describing the database structure (database metadata) as well as a collection of XML files describing the table content (database primary data) as well as - optionally - some text files and some binary files representing database large objects (BLOBs and CLOBs). SIARD format is used for archiving databases adhering to the SQL (ideally SQL:1999 core) standard.
File extensions: siard
Source: Swiss Federal Archives / Swiss Federal Archives
Developed by: Swiss Federal Archives / Swiss Federal Archives
Supported by: Swiss Federal Archives / Swiss Federal Archives

Has priority over

Note: Signature for SIARD, combining that of a standard ZIP file and the expected XMLNS string: xmlns=“http://www.bar.admin.ch/xmlns/siard/1.0/metadata.xsd“ - Offset currently set to 1024 bytes but it is expected that this could be improved given further test data.

Min Frag Length: Absolute from BOF
Offset: 0
Max offset: None
Byte Sequence: 504B0304*504B0304*786D6C6E733D22687474703A2F2F7777772E6261722E61646D696E2E63682F786D6C6E732F73696172642F312E302F6D657461646174612E78736422
Endianness: None

Type: ZIP

BOFoffset