Editing RSF School and Workshop, Vancouver 2006 (section)

=== Joe Dellinger: DDS, A Seismic Processing Architecture ===

The Data Dictionary System (DDS1) is a seismic processing architecture. It has proved its value for both research and production in seismic imaging inside Amoco and BP for more than a decade. The software has been ported to more than a dozen hardware platforms and the data sets can be efficiently accessed across any combination of them. A key (and at this time, unique) feature of DDS is its ability to read and write almost any data format. This is primarily useful because it allows DDS to inter-operate with other processing systems, allowing DDS to serve as a bridge between different processing environments. However, in the spirit of reproducible research, it also allows DDS to document data so that it can be read and understood into the future. DDS was released by BP America in 2003 under an open-source license. The goal of this paper is to reveal useful innovations so that subsequent projects can benefit from DDS, as DDS has benefited from concepts from earlier processing systems.