Impediments to an Elusive Dream : Computer Access to Numeric Data for Engineering Materials

Direct and easy-to-use access to a worldwide network of numeric material property databases has been an objective for the past fifteen years, and yet that result remains elusive. In this paper, the authors explore the technical and non-technical issues that have limited it, note some actions that may help meet the objective, and speculate on the nature of the next generation of materials data networks.