A global geochemical database structure for rocks

This technical brief describes a geochemical and petrological database structure based on the relational model that has broad applicability to chemical analyses of geological materials. Notable features of the database structure are its comprehensiveness and flexibility. The structure consists of 34 interrelated tables, which can accommodate any type of analytical values for all different materials of rock samples (volcanic glasses, minerals, inclusions, etc.) and for samples from any tectonic setting. A broad spectrum of supplementary information (metadata) is included that describes the quality of the analytical data and sample characteristics, such as petrography, geographical location, and sampling process, and that can be used to evaluate, filter, and sort the chemical data. All data in the database are linked to their original reference. The database structure can be implemented in any relational database management system (RDBMS). It is currently applied in two different rock database projects (RidgePetDB and GEOROC).