SIARD Suite is a software developed by the Federal Archives to simplify archiving of relational databases. It complies with international standards and is used in over 50 countries around the globe. It is provided by the Federal Archives free of charge.
To enable long-term digital archiving of databases independently of their software, the Federal Archives have developed the Software Independent Archiving of Relational Databases (SIARD) solution. It is based on the open SIARD file format and the associated SIARD Suite software. It permits archiving of the following database types:
- MS Access 2007 or newer
- DB/2 or newer
- MySQL (or MariaDB) 5.5 or newer
- Oracle 10 or newer
- PostgreSQL 11 or newer
- SQL Server 2012 or newer
How does SIARD work?
SIARD Suite extracts content from relational databases and stores it in the archivable SIARD format. This file format enables data to be stored long-term in the archives independently of the original software. If necessary, the data can be loaded into a new database. They can then be stored independently of the original database and used in modern database systems, both now and in the future.
International and national standards
The SIARD format is based on four internationally recognised standards: XML, SQL:2008, UNICODE and ZIP64.
At national level, the eCH association adopted the SIARD format as the eCH standard (eCH-0165: SIARD Format Specification, 1.0 version). The association supports the development and promotion of e-government standards in Switzerland.
The SIARD format description 2.2 version can be downloaded here (PDF, 1 MB, 07.10.2022).
