MICADO: The data import engine of the CERN engineering and equipment data management system

The CERN Engineering and Equipment Data Management System (EDMS) is one of the largest and most complex data management systems of its kind. For the last 10 years, it has received huge quantities of data generated in the different LHC project phases. Capturing all this information would not have been possible without a robust, failsafe, yet flexible and user-friendly data import engine. For this purpose the Micado toolkit was developed at CERN using XML standards, providing multi-level data verifications, an advanced queuing mechanism and batch processing of large amounts of import requests. Whereas Micado originally was developed to facilitate the capturing of LHC manufacturing data, its modular architecture has allowed a cost-effective extension to also cater for the LHC installation and hardware commissioning data import processes. Recently Micado has broadened its scope even further, including also imports of safety inspections, and at the same time the next generation of the tool providing Web Services is already being developed.