STFC has developed a systematic approach for managing and archiving data generated from its large-scale analytic facilities, which is used with variations by the ISIS Neutron Source, the Diamond Light Source and the Central Laser Facility. This is centred around the ICAT experiment metadata catalogue. The ICAT acts as a core middleware component recording and guiding the storage of raw data and subsequent access and reuse of the data; it has evolved into a suite of tools which can be used to build data management infrastructure. In this talk, I shall describe the current status of the ICAT. The data rates and volumes generated from facilities are ever increasing and experimental science is becoming more complex. This is presenting challenges to the user community in accessing, handling and processing data. I shall describe some approaches to these problems and consider how we are exploring further support for data analysis and publication workflows within a large-scale facility. Finally, I shall consider how we might develop metadata to capture and share this information across communities. |