Case Study: Objectivity/DB and Seismic Research

Objectivity/DB Enables a Complex Seismic Research System

Click here to download this Case Study in Adobe Acrobat PDF format

The Challenge: Process huge quantities of complex seismic research data in real time

When a leading geophysical services company recognized a need within the Oil and Gas Industry for a seismic research application that could handle ever-increasing volumes of data while meeting higher standards for quality and greater demand for cost efficiency, application developers turned to Objectivity/DB.

Developers were looking for a way to create a tightly integrated system of highly networked acquisition and processing modules, providing customers with real-time answers and comprehensive quality assurance.

Seismic Research and Data Collection

Seismic research consists of sending acoustic energy into the earth, then recording the energy that bounces back from subsurface rock layers. Interpretation of the returned energy is used to map the shape, extent and depth of rocks that may contain hydrocarbons. Much of the world's hydrocarbon reserves lie offshore, sometimes thousands of feet below the ocean floor. To help detect these reserves, marine seismic data are acquired using purpose-built survey vessels. These vessels tow equipment that generates acoustic energy, detects return echoes, and sends the signals to shipboard computers for real-time analysis.

The Solution: Objectivity/DB

We selected Objectivity because its' scalable architecture was perfectly suited to the demanding data acquisition requirements of [the system].(Project Development Manager)

The company selected Objectivity/DB to fuel the navigation module of the system, which collects GPS, acoustic, compass and other sensor data, computes the network node positions, calculates source and receiver positions and stores the raw data and results in Objectivity/DB. The data management system was an ideal fit due to its ability to store massive quantities of disparate data, regardless of the size or format of the information.

"We selected Objectivity because its scalable architecture was perfectly suited to the demanding data acquisition requirements of [the system]," said the Project Development Manager. "Additionally, Objectivity's language interoperability and high performance were also important decision factors for us."

The company continues to run Objectivity/DB on the Sun Solaris platform and utilizes C++ for the high performance data acquisition and processing portion of the module and JAVA for the user interface.

A Note on Objectivity/DB

Objectivity/DB is a fully scalable, distributed processing architecture that manages localized, centralized or distributed databases by synthesizing large, complicated streams of data into a single logical view.