Another important issue is safeguarding high investments made into materials research, meaning that experimental data must be properly conserved, easily be located and quickly be retrieved.
Various categories of MDBs exist for different requirements, for example containing standards data on metallic alloys and plastics or more complex database applications needed for design analysis.
Web-enabled MDBs provide a more centralized management and conservation of Materials data.
Finding and accessing the required data is faster than to search for them in a traditional manner, e.g. from handbooks or Microsoft Excel files.
In particular the dissemination of public research results has improved, as the data are accessible over the World Wide Web.