Steve,

How ironic that your editorial is on the same day as the

Worth a Second Look - Running a Query Using a Text File for Input is in the featured articles. I've worked for a large regional bank and as a consultant for a major Aluminum manufacturer. Both are required to keep financial, tax and production information for an exceptional number of years to guard against litigation. (Digital storage manufacturers benefitted from the tobacco industries problems too.) We utilized the pdf/a for reporting purposes but trusted them only a little. For data that you really truly need to recover, no matter what digital technology is in play export to a delimited file. Provided the world doesn't completely lose all power sources and reenter the dark ages we should as data professionals always be able to import the data again. (As an alternative energy geek myself I don't see that happening.)

So that's how we got the raw data out of the database.

We then stored this exported data on CD and then DVD media because of it's stable long term capabilities. AND the data was rolled to archive tape. But the archive tape was required to be restored and the consistency checked every 5 years on data with a high risk footprint. The restored export files were then archived again in the newer archival solution. This way we were covered for degradation in media as well as expiring technology. (The business process owners were responsible for assessing the risk footprint.)