World sediment-hosted copper deposit database
Authors: Kirkham R V , Carrière J J , Rafer A B , Born P 
Published: May 2015

Foreword
This publication contains a database in Microsoft Access format that houses index level information for sediment hosted copper deposits worldwide, plus derivative reports, transfer formats and geospatial data. Data compilation started in the 1980's by Rod Kirkham, the commodity expert in copper and
molybdenum. It was entered into a database by Janet Carrière, supported by Robert Laramée and David Garson of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) Mineral Resource Division data bank. The ongoing data compilation formed an information resource for numerous review papers (Boyle et al.,
1989; Kirkham, 1989; Kirkham, 1996; Hitzman et al., 2005) which should be consulted for the database's geoscience context. Because most of the original records were compiled before 1993 when locations were read from small scale paper maps, it is cautioned that they are geographically imprecise and
compilers adopted the convention of rounding them to the nearest minute. This would preclude locating an individual mine or pit in Google Earth, but might only be a small drawback on a global scale because well-developed sediment-hosted copper systems tend to be exceptionally extensive laterally,
and mineralization occurs in multiple zones. It also should be cautioned that resource estimates1 captured in this database are historical and do not conform to Securities Commission National Instrument 43-101 standards, regardless of how they are classified in the database.
The sediment-hosted copper database was first released as a paper world deposit-geology map (Kirkham et al.,1994) and the digital database was released in full (Kirkham et al., 1995) on the multicomponent Generalized geology of the world and linked databases CD-ROM. At this point in time and during
the industry sponsored World Map Project (1996-1997) which followed, the structure of each specialized GSC mineral deposit database was unique to individual geoscientific working groups, as exemplified by the contrasts among the databases of Kirkham et al. (1995), Jenkins et al. (1997), Kirkham and
Dunne (2000), and Jenkins and Lydon (2002). A common format was subsequently developed for all deposit databases, so that the same data management utilities could be used, under the World Minerals Geoscience Database Project (WMGDP: 1998-2004), a project sponsored jointly by the GSC and exploration
companies2. Pre-existing deposit databases, including the sediment-hosted copper database, were converted to the common format. This database was then updated sequentially on contract by Peter Born and Antonio Rafer using the common utilities, and has subsequently undergone minor revisions. After
the WMGDP, all deposit databases were made accessible through the World and Canadian Mineral Deposits web map portal as agreed to by project sponsors. However, this portal was decommissioned in 2014 under new Government of Canada internet guidelines. The aim of this Open File is to make the full
sediment-hosted copper database and its supporting database management utilities available to any client who can use them, and to provide simple attributed derivative ESRI Shape and Google Earth files, and folders of full deposit and deposit group reports, accompanied by Tables of Contents files
index.html, that can be read by anyone using an Internet browser.
The rationale for the common WMGDP database schema was described by Chorlton et al. (2007). The web-style Documentation folder, modified from Laramée (2004), contains a thorough description of the WMGDP schema and supporting data management utilities, and can be read with an Internet browser by
clicking on the file default.htm. During the WMGDP, compilers (deposit specialists) and company sponsors iteratively suggested topics to be included in the schema. They also provided helpful feedback for the functionality of the data management interfaces. This resulted in incremental updates
between releases to company sponsors. World and Canadian lode gold databases (Gosselin and Dubé, 2005a, b) were released in schema 3.19, the version used for the final release 3.6 to company sponsors in 2004. The schema, now at version 3.21, release 3.7, is a major update of version 3.19, with
the addition of extra tables required for compilations under the Northern Resource Development and Northern Mineral Resource Development programs.
The GlobalDB System schema (last page of this document) includes sets of tables that can be used to describe six entities (things): deposits/occurrences, deposit groups, mines, production figures, resource figures, and references. The deposits and deposit groups modules describe locations, deposit
type and subtype, names, country and province, commodities, geological ages, host rocks, related igneous rocks, mineralization styles, coincident features, radiometric dates, tectonic settings, shape and dimensions, NTS areas, qualified comments, links to other databases, geophysical /geochemical
signature, sample geochemistry, and compilation stage and progress. The service tables: entities, tabledoc, links, columndoc, tabpages, and lookup explicitly define the entities, tables, links between tables, fields, interface tab pages, and the lookup tables, to completely define the schema. Two
additional service tables: dbversion and unitcvsn, provide the title, version and authors of the current database, and conversion factors (to metric) for the production and resource figures, respectively. The service tables, described above, should be consulted before transferring this data across
database management programs and platforms, or rebuilding the data management applications when the application interfaces supplied with this Open File can no longer be used because of changes to the Windows operating system.
Standalone custom Windows application interfaces, developed by Robert M. Laramée3, enable a user with a 32 bit computer equipped with the Windows operating system to browse, filter, and obtain output from this database. These interfaces are included in the folder GlobalDBSystem321. All
applications require an ADO connection file, or Microsoft data link, to each database for which they are to be used, and should be created in the same folder that houses the application interfaces4. GlobalDBSystem321 folder and files can be saved anywhere and can be used directly without an
installation step. Instructions for creating the mandatory Microsoft data link file are included under "Defining database aliases" in the Documentation\default.htm and in the standalone file HowtoADO.rtf.
GShellBrowser allows a user to browse the database record by record, and offers the same tab page view of the data offered by the original data entry interface, GShellADO, known in short form as GShell. The latter only works under the Windows XP and earlier Windows operating systems, and has been
included in this package for users who still have a Windows XP computer (disconnected from the Internet because Microsoft no longer provides security updates), or have an XP emulator installed. GQueryADO, known as GQuery for short, provides a user the means to filter the occurrences based on
attribute values, to build a template for a custom spreadsheet and export this spreadsheet or a default summary spreadsheet, and to create folders of occurrence reports for the full set or subsets of the deposits in the database. Both GShellBrowser and GQuery work under Windows 7 on a 32 bit
computer once the pre-requisite ADO connection file has been created.
There are three additional programs in GlobalDBSystem321: GQ_ADO_XtraTables, Documenter, and GBDSTools. The program GQ_ADO_XtraTables builds or rebuilds summary tables for the use of GQuery, which improved performance over an older method of creating these summary tables on the fly. The program
Documenter allows users to examine each table and field of each category of table (Data, Junction, Lookup, and Service depending on their roles), which complements the more general web page style documentation. Finally, GDBSTools provides a database manager with utilities that can check the internal
integrity of the database, time stamp a new release and export SQL data scripts of the contents of the connected database. These SQL scripts can be used to populate a new database created with GlobalDBSchema321.sql in one of many SQL-enabled relational database management systems available
today.