THE DATA-FLOW, FROM OBSERVATIONS TO THE ARCHIVE - SIMULATING THE CASEOF TNG

The telescopes of the new generation allow an archive to be built as a section of data management; nevertheless, careful planning is needed and data handling needs to be designed together with the control syste m of the telescope itself, both for space-borne and for ground-based f acilities. Simulations are essential to understand how observations wi ll be archived, and to build and test an archiving system capable of d ealing efficiently with the expected data flow. The TNG (Telescopio Na zionale Galileo) will be one of the first groundbased observing facili ties where archiving of both technical and scientific data will be mad e directly at the telescope as a natural extension of the data handlin g chain. The results obtained testing the prototype implementation of the archive system at the TNG with a simulated data flow will be shown .