HYMOS, an information system for water and the environment, is a software package with a very long history. Starting in the mid-1970s, the system has been widely used in the Netherlands and abroad. The system essentially comprises a database for the storage of time series of water-related information, both quantitative and qualitative, and an extensive function library for data analysis. Notwithstanding the unrivalled performance of the HYMOS proprietary database, the development of a generic database server connecting HYMOS to all ODBC compliant databases was required. The challenge was to design a database server that is sufficiently generic in order to accommodate all existing users and database systems, without sacrificing too much in terms of performance, and to maintain sufficient flexibility in the setup of the data model.
Research initiated in 2003 into the development of database server for large datasets resulted in a database server design that seemed promising. A test implementation for primarily performance testing showed that it was possible to meet performance criteria, and in 2004 the final database server was implemented.
The new database server has been incorporated into HYMOS version 4.5. With this version, current HYMOS users will be much better equipped to meet the requirements of the Water Framework Directive, as this will allow users to combine all water- related information in a single, consistent database. With this version users will also be able to perform combined analyses of qualitative and quantitative parameters. |
