This is a quick introduction on how to archive databases with SIARD Suite. It also covers organizational issues that should be considered.

1. Make sure you know which parts of the database need to be archived. If needed, get in touch with the responsible personnel, e.g. someone from the archive responsible for appraisal.
2. Prepare the database for archival: create a new user on the database system that only has read permissions to objects that need to be archived. If needed, create a copy of your database (or certain tables/parts of it) or create views. The database may not be changed during the archival process, otherwise extraction with SIARD Suite will fail. Never archive from a live system.
3. Download the database using SIARD Suite.
4. Quality control: check the SIARD file to make sure that everything needed is included, spot check some entries to ensure everything went well.
5. Advanced quality control: load SIARD file into a database system again. Run some defined queries on the original database as well as on the archived one and compare results.
6. Supplement SIARD file with meta data.
7. Define which external documentation needs to be archived together with the SIARD file to ensure comprehensability of the data (e.g. code tables, system documentation, Entity-Relationship-Diagram, ...).