MTA DATABASE
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MTA database will have a tolerance of 16 seconds.  i.e. all elements
which occur within +- 16 seconds of a fiducial element will be in the
same table row. unless otherwise specified (Expect tolerance on Gyros
to be 0.5seconds. Expect tolerance on Point sources to be +- 3 sec.). 
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DB group will provide tools for database compression.
        Once a month DB group will compress all data over 30 days old
        to 5 minutes time intervals.
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a row in the data base should look like this:

MSID    time  dt Value variance  limit  (dt=tolerance)

i.e a nominal entry from Lm would look like this

4RT501  237812.278  16  72  0  5

but after compression

4RT501  237812.278  150  72.21  .21  5(status of 72.21 -if this is too 
                                        difficult we could make it the
                                        lowest of all status values 
                                        involved on the compression)

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All fields in the DB will be searchable.
I.E. return all Gyro data when the ACIS background was high
or return all Gyro data when background was high and altitude was
between 70K and 120K.
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3/3/99
The only scenario where additional
samples within an existing time interval
(i.e, an interval that already exists in
the average table) would be during reprocessing
of the data. And in such a case, the
existing averaged values would be REPLACED
with the new data.