Logical design and prototype implementation of a BGS Building Stones Database

This short report describes the design of a prototype database to hold information on UK Building Stones, which has been partly funded by the BGS Information Management Programme on the Management of Minerals and Geochemical Data Project (ESB91900085).
A brief introduction provides information on BGS’ current data holdings on building stones and gives reasons why they need to rationalised and coordinated. The nature of the BGS data on building stones is analysed and the logical entities and enterprise rules defined before a logical design is presented. The design has been implemented in Microsoft Access 2000 and has links to ORACLE databases for Mines and Quarries (BritPits) and rock samples (BritRocks). Some of the database tables have been populated but at present many of the linking tables are empty and require population. Finally a short discussion and recommendations for further work is provided.