But progress is slow on the cooperative project.
The EuroFinder project (see PDM Vol 3, N° 4) was instigated after many Finder users realized that they were independently devoting significant resources to the same Finder customizations. EuroFinder began in 1997 and reached critical mass after a couple of years with twelve participating companies. The Phase II development which began in 1998 extended the Finder data model following GeoQuest and using POSC’s Epicentre data model.
The Plan
The plan all along was that GeoQuest would incorporate the EuroFinder extensions into future releases of Finder. Currently, the plan is to include EuroFinder Stratigraphy in Finder release 9.0 and to continue to work on the other domains beyond the 9.0 release.
Well Header
Implementation of the Well Header Module is imminent. EuroFinder customization for North Sea use includes well header localization for elevation references and datums, new referential integrity constraints to all enumerated data types and the addition of attributes to model the complex linkage of sidetracks to preexisting borehole. Elsewhere, more granularity has been introduced into lease modeling, with lease attributes replaced by foreign keys to a new lease data model.
Foreign Key
Similarly, business associate attributes have been replaced by foreign keys to the new business associate model. Similar changes are underway in areas such as stratigraphy, logging, drilling, and seismics and a set of standard meta-data attributes are being introduced to track transaction history, data source and verification status.
Doomed?
PDM comment : EuroFinder progress has been heavy going and not all members are satisfied with the effort that GeoQuest has put into the project. This is surprising since the EuroFinder project is the archetype of the kind of outsourcing that the service industry at large is advocating. Why then doesn’t it work better? Is it that GeoQuest is not all that interested in the economy of scale and effort that such a collaborative venture should produce? Is it that data modeling by committee is doomed from the outset? Is it that Epicentre is an unwieldy tool? Answers on a postcard please.
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