  Research on alternate media technologies, like film, synthetic DNA, and
glass, for long-term data archival has received a lot of attention recently due
to the media obsolescence issues faced by contemporary storage media like tape,
Hard Disk Drives (HDD), and Solid State Disks (SSD). While researchers have
developed novel layout and encoding techniques for archiving databases on these
new media types, one key question remains unaddressed: How do we ensure that
the decoders developed today will be available and executable by a user who is
restoring an archived database several decades later in the future, on a
computing platform that potentially does not even exist today?
  In this paper, we make the case for Universal Layout Emulation (ULE), a new
approach for future-proof, long-term database archival that advocates archiving
decoders together with the data to ensure successful recovery. In order to do
so, ULE brings together concepts from Data Management and Digital Preservation
communities by using emulation for archiving decoders. In order to show that
ULE can be implemented in practice, we present the design and evaluation of
Micr'Olonys, an end-to-end long-term database archival system that can be used
to archive databases using visual analog media like film, microform, and
archival paper.
