Los Alamos National Laboratory Advances Scientific Data Discovery with Progress Federal Solutions
Products:
Data PlatformChallenge
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, decades of decentralized scientific data creation resulted in inconsistent or missing metadata across systems. Researchers struggled to discover and reuse critical technical information, limiting collaboration and slowing research due to the absence of standardized metadata practices. To address these issues, the organization began searching for an enterprise solution capable of standardizing metadata across diverse systems while supporting secure, large-scale scientific data discovery.
Solution
- Leveraged the MarkLogic solution, a core part of the Progress Data Platform, to centralize and harmonize metadata
- Enabled flexible metadata models supporting standards, controlled vocabularies and evolving research requirements
- Delivered enterprise governance with consistent metadata management across systems, teams and repositories
Result
- Accelerated data discovery and retrieval through centralized metadata, increasing research throughput and reducing redundant analysis
- Expanded utilization of historical datasets via ongoing ingestion, OCR and enrichment, maximizing the value of existing data assets
- Standardized metadata across systems, reducing integration complexity and lowering operational overhead for data management and governance
Full Story
Challenge
At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), decades of scientific and weapons research generated massive volumes of data distributed across siloed systems. Much of this data lacked consistent or complete metadata, making it difficult to identify, access and reuse valuable information. Researchers often spent significant time searching for relevant data or recreating work, slowing collaboration and impacting mission efficiency.
This fragmentation was compounded by the absence of standardized metadata practices across the organization. Data existed in many formats and repositories, with varying levels of structure and quality. It became difficult to discover or trust critical technical information, limiting its usability for ongoing research and national security initiatives.
Recognizing both the scale of the problem and the importance of preserving institutional knowledge, LANL identified the need for a secure, enterprise-grade data solution. The organization sought a platform that could unify disparate data sources, standardize metadata and support large-scale, governed data discovery—so that “weapons data needed a home” where it could be reliably accessed and reused.
Historical data needs a place, and the NSDS (National Security Data Solution) is that place thanks to our partnership with Progress.
Michael Ham
Director of Mission Data Stewardship Alliance at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Solution
After careful evaluation, LANL selected Progress® MarkLogic® platform, a core component of the Progress® Data Platform, and partnered with Progress Federal Solutions to build the National Security Data Solution (NSDS), a mission-critical application developed on top of the platform.
Using the flexible data model and powerful metadata capabilities of the MarkLogic platform, LANL established a unified layer that could accommodate structured and unstructured data, evolving standards and controlled vocabularies. This approach enabled consistent metadata management across systems and teams, while preserving the flexibility required for scientific research and mission-critical operations.
Over more than seven years of partnership, NSDS has matured into a trusted, operational platform supporting sensitive weapons data. As noted by the NSDS team leading the project, “We selected MarkLogic and partnered with Progress to build the National Security Data Solution (NSDS)—a platform that has supported mission-critical weapons data at Los Alamos for over seven years and continues to evolve.” The solution provides a governed, scalable foundation for enterprise-wide data discovery and management.
Result
With the NSDS in place, LANL has established a centralized environment for ingesting and managing decades of historical scientific and weapons data. While ingestion is ongoing—and some legacy assets continue to undergo OCR and metadata enrichment—the platform already provides significantly improved visibility into available data across the laboratory.
Researchers and data stewards now benefit from enhanced discoverability, more consistent metadata and streamlined access to critical information. This has reduced friction in locating and reusing data, enabling more efficient collaboration and helping unlock the value of previously siloed or underutilized datasets.
Today, the NSDS stands as a proven, mission-critical platform powered by the Progress Data Platform and MarkLogic platform. It continues to scale as new data is onboarded and is expanding beyond its initial scope to support the broader nuclear security enterprise. What began as a need for a centralized data home has evolved into a foundation for long-term governance, reuse and mission success, "powering secure, scalable weapons data at Los Alamos and expanding across the complex.”
We selected MarkLogic and partnered with Progress to build the National Security Data Solution (NSDS)—a platform that has supported mission-critical weapons data at Los Alamos for over seven years and continues to evolve.
Michael Ham
Director of Mission Data Stewardship Alliance at Los Alamos National Laboratory