Camelot is a database system designed for output from the climate model run
by the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office. It contains metadata
for climate model output held in a tape archive and on the workstation sys
tem used for analysis. The system is required because of the large and rapi
dly growing volume of archive data and the great variety of uses of the cli
mate model. Camelot enables the user to find out about what has been archiv
ed and to retrieve data selectively to the workstations with specifications
given in terms of metadata rather than files, without recopying data alrea
dy held online. The PV-WAVE analysis environment used on the workstation sy
stem also allows the user to access the data by reference to its metadata.