Remaining questions from the "Preserving Digital Foundations" event

During the "Preserving Digital Foundations with eArchiving” event, some questions remained unanswered during the sessions. Here are the answers provided by our panellists.

A picture of yellow interrogations signs — Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licenses © Aakash Dhage for Unsplash

This is a complementary piece to the event report, Exploring the development of database preservation and the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Regulation.

Questions from the Database Preservation session

Related to the presentation Meeting End-User Expectations with dbDIPview

Question: Do the reports you have shown have to be prepared in advance?

Answer from Boris Domajnko (MSCS International Database-Archiving Working Group): The system allows for the deployment of databases and access rights with a single command, driven by the current version of the order XML configuration file. Before deployment, you can easily modify key parameters within this file, such as the current end-user order ID, public access settings, and data redaction.

Reports are prepared in advance during the ingest process. A Python tool parses SIARD files and generates an Excel configuration file. This Excel file is then manually edited to include detailed configurations, such as search forms and dictionaries. From this refined Excel file, the package configuration files are created. The package can be built and deployed. We then manually refine the reports within the active database to ensure accuracy and completeness. The results are compared against production data. Ultimately, these reports will be incorporated into the final version of the package.

The tool also supports a similar workflow using CSV files as an input source.

You can find more information in the GitHub wiki section. I'm happy to provide a more detailed explanation that fits your specific needs – just let me know!

Related to the presentation Beyond Relational Databases: Challenges of Archiving NoSQL or Graphs

Question: What format do you use to archive a NoSQL database? SIARD?

Answer from Sven Schlarb (AIT, Austria): SIARD is specifically designed for the long-term preservation of relational databases, relying on well-defined structures such as tables, columns, and keys. Because of this, it does not support the fundamentally different data models used in NoSQL systems – such as document stores, key-value pairs, column-family stores, or graph databases.

Currently, there is no widely adopted equivalent to SIARD for NoSQL databases. However, several approaches are being explored and used in practice. These include exporting data in standard formats such as JSON or XML, accompanied by rich metadata to preserve context and semantics. For graph databases, serialisation formats like RDF or GraphML are commonly used, especially when combined with ontologies to capture structure and meaning.

In some cases, institutions are also employing strategies such as containerisation or emulation to preserve not only the data, but also the entire environment needed to interpret it. As outlined in my presentation at the eArchiving Initiative’s event, there is an opportunity to apply AI and large language models to help normalise and describe complex NoSQL datasets – a direction I believe holds a great deal of promise, especially when guided by well-defined ontologies.

So, while SIARD is not directly applicable to NoSQL, there are viable and evolving methods for addressing the preservation challenges these systems present.

Questions from the EUDI (eIDAs) electronic archiving trusted service session

Question: I would expect the majority of Digital Preservation installations around Europe and the world are based on products from five vendors (Libnova, Artefactual, ExLibris, Arkivum, and Preservica) who, between them, have thousands of organisations using them. How many of these vendors are actively contributing to the creation and implementation of these regulations? To the best of my knowledge, the vendors are not involved in any way. Without their active support most users will struggle to conform to the regulations.

Answer from Carlota Bustelo (Gabinerte Umbus, Spain): Regulations in the EU are discussed and approved by the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament. Implementing Acts are drafted by the corresponding Unit in the European Commission based on the available standards. In this context, the CEN Technical Committee 468 (Preservation of Digital Information) was established, which has published the CEN TS 18170, "Functional Requirements for Electronic Archiving Services." Participation in the CEN Technical Committees shall be undertaken by the National Standardisation Members Bodies, which can nominate experts for the technical work. Despite Brexit, British Standards remain part of CEN. Each National Standardisation body has its own rules for participation. There are no nominated experts from the mentioned solution providers, but others from France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain are actively participating.

For clarification, it is not the users who are mandated to be compliant with regulations, but rather the service providers. The regulation is intended to harmonise the market by providing the status of Qualified Trusted Providers (listed here). Depending on their needs and objectives, users can choose services that are trusted and listed, or those that are not.

Question: Is it necessary that an institutional and heritage archive service is to be qualified to store and preserve signed documents and to be considered as a qualified trust service (without having been audited by the supervisory body)?

Answer from Marta Gaia Castellan (Tinexta Infocert, Italy): The Regulation said exactly: “The activities of national archives and memory institutions, in their capacity as organisations dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage in the public interest, are usually regulated in national law and they do not necessarily provide trust services within the meaning of this Regulation. In so far, such institutions do not provide such trust services, this Regulation is without prejudice to their operation.”

Institutional and heritage archive services are not mandatory to be a qualified trusted service. If, for any reason, an institutional and heritage archive service wants to act in the market as a qualified trust service, it does not require a different process.

Grouped questions about the relationship between electronic signatures and electronic archiving services

Whether an electronic signature is necessary for the integrity of documents in eArchiving, as it is in Italy.
All signing systems require some trust components external to the archive – to provide independent validation. Importantly, a revocation mechanism will be necessary to address the inevitable breaches. How will these be guaranteed to continue to exist for archival timescales?
Long-term signing systems (e.g. military/aerospace) periodically have to re-sign documents to allow for changing standards/security. What is secure now will not be in the future – are archives prepared for this?
What is the difference between eArchiving and the preservation with storage as described in the ETSI TS 119 511 standard, necessary to the previous eIDAS preservation service? Can the report of signed and digitally marked file hashes, already described in ISO 14641 standard, constitute the proof of preservation? Will the new CEN/TS 18170:2025 constitute a European shared technical standard for eArchiving?
Is the principal objective of EATS to add electronic signatures to existing digital preservation standards or to create a whole new standard? Because, as has been pointed out, we already have over 20 of those.

Carlota Bustelo (Gabinete Umbus, Spain) answers: The electronic archiving service is independent from the other services about electronic signatures in the same Regulation, including the electronic signatures preservation services. Service providers can combine different services for their clients in the market. Electronic archiving services could include electronically signed documents and data, as well as others without electronic signatures.

Electronic archiving service shall “use procedures and technologies capable of ensuring the durability and legibility of electronic data and electronic documents beyond the technological validity period and at least throughout the legal or contractual preservation period, while maintaining their integrity and the accuracy of their origin”. CEN/TS 18170:2025, provides examples on how to do it.

Question: With a qualified e-archiving system in one country, will we have the same evidential value across the entire European community? Just as currently happens with electronic signatures issued by a Certification Authority (e.g., an Italian one), whose validity is recognised throughout Europe.

Answer from Carlota Bustelo (Gabinete Umbus, Spain) and Marta Gaia Castellan (Tinexta Infocert, Italy): Exactly, this is the primary purpose of the Regulation. Question: Is it not necessary to align also legislation at the national level to the EU one? Some legal aspects, like dematerialisation, are not accepted in certain EU countries. Then how can some of the requirements imposed at the EU level be met in these countries?

Answer from Marta Gaia Castellan (Tinexta Infocert, Italy): Taking in account that the Regulation only affects the services offered in the market, it is also stated that “to the extent that electronic archiving services are not harmonised by this Regulation, it should be possible for Member States to maintain or introduce national provisions, in accordance with Union law, relating to those services, such as specific provisions for services integrated in an organisation and only used for the internal archives of that organisation. This Regulation “should apply to electronic data and electronic documents created in electronic form as well as paper documents that have been scanned and digitised”.

Remaining questions from the "Preserving Digital Foundations" event

Questions from the Database Preservation session

Questions from the EUDI (eIDAs) electronic archiving trusted service session

Grouped questions about the relationship between electronic signatures and electronic archiving services

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