Data should be stored differently at different steps of the process

[tpoisot]

Basically, the format for long-term archival is not the same format that is needed for day-to-day analysis. I'd say that in the opposite direction, actually: don't archive your data in the format that makes sense for you in your day-to-day use.

[jhollist]

👍 I was going to to add something similar, but you beat me to it @tpoisot !

This general idea is captured in the discussion in swcarpentry/DEPRECATED-site#797. Another tangent to this is the idea that not all data are created equal wrt accessibility (i.e. Personally Identifiable Information, Conf. Business Info, etc.) I don't personally work with this type of data so someone else should probably chime in. Perhaps that should be another rule?

[PBarmby]

See also the second ref in #3 for some comments re: different formats for different usage.

[emhart]

@tpoisot Could you share a use case here? Are you thinking that it might be archived as plain text but you'd want to access it in a SQL database?