The Public Petroleum Data Model
I am in receipt of a January 2007 publication from Nickels Publications. This month's issue is on Petroleum Software with the sub-title Upstream Data Surge, and focuses specifically on the Public Producers Data Model (PPDM). A non-profit organization dedicated to standardized data and database schema's for upstream oil and gas. PPDM provides a forum for software companies and producers to standardize the data set for oil and gas. They provide the Data Definition Language component of SQL to build the database for this data. PPDM have extended much of this into the standardization model necessary for the transactions between producers to be standardized. This brochure can be downloaded from the home page of their website.
I have written about PPDM before and those comments are here, here and here. I have now deprecated the comments that I made regarding the use of PPDM and I am now essentially supporting the data model. It would be a mistake to ignore the fine work of these people. The change of heart is based on the comments made by the Chairman of PPDM Arthur Boykiw:
"A second worry is monopoly. As common data standards are developed, oil and gas producers do not wish to see them become the private property of one or two software vendors."I concur with Art's comments in terms of the standardized data model. There is no conflict between the data model and the copyright that I hold. Using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct uses a different perception of the data within the model than a system developed for the hierarchy would. As I indicated in the Final Research Report this copyright is a benefit for the energy industry, enabling it to focus on the right solution.
The analogy that PPDM puts out is addressed in "What the heck is a data model?
"Only very rarely does a high-rise office or apartment tower collapse due to poor construction. That's because everyone in the building industry must work within the terms of a building code. In a well governed country that safety code is based on carefully-defined technical terms and standards. The alternative - a construction sector in which architects, engineers, contractors and building materials manufacturers could each define their own safety standards - would be a recipe for disaster, and also for inefficiency.In the Final Research Report I noted a technical vision that included wireless, Java, asynchronous process management and IPv6. The combined effect of these technologies is a logarithmic growth in the data of a producer. How the producer deals with this growth is an integral part of the PPDM role. A process that we can freely contribute too and expand. This alleviates many of the problems and issues of developing a data model, for this development, for the industry and the
In a parallel way, the Public Petroleum Data Model defines technical standards for anyone who creates upstream petroleum software applications and administers digital information. Each technical term or standard in the PPDM is defined so that it will mesh well with all of the others. That framework of definitions is called a data model.
Much like construction designers create an enormous range of high-rises, factories, houses and so forth within the building code, software developers can work marvels to the limit of their imaginations within the Public Petroleum Data Model. Think of PPDM as the software building code for the energy industry."
I am looking forward to commencing these developments. So many of the basics such as the PPDM Data Model are available to us that was not used by our competitors. In addition to PPDM we have the following attributes of this development that provide significant value to our system.
- Open Source Projects
- Sun Solaris Operating System
- Ingress Relational Database
- Java
- NetBeans and Eclipse Integrated Development Environments (IDE)
- Java Enterprise Edition
- Mature
- Robust
- Capable
- Broadband Internet Access
- Ubiquitous
- High user level capabilities.
- Grid Computing
- Processing power
- Low costs
- Zero footprint for producers.
- PPDM's data model
- Standardized
- Mature
- Technical alignment between the producers organizational frameworks
- Legal
- Financial
- Operational Decision Making
- Cultural
- Accountability
Technorati Tags: Capabilities, Software, Strategy, PPDM
photo courtesy David Sifry