ABSTRACTION OF MULTIPLE-FORMAT GEOLOGICAL AND GEOPHYSICAL DATA FOR OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION ANALYSIS

A computer system and method of operating the same, to execute multiple analysis application programs upon multiple persistent databases, each arranged to a vendor-specific format for geological and geophysical data, is disclosed. According to the disclosed embodiments of the invention, an abstract object interface is provided, by way of which the analysis application program need not be aware of the vendor format of the persistent database upon which operations are being executed. The abstract object interface includes program code by way of which, upon execution, a hierarchy of objects are instantiated. Prior to instantiating objects according to the geologically-related information, the user selects a particular source of data, for example by selecting a catalog corresponding to one of the vendor formats. At this time, objects corresponding to the contents of the selected persistent database are instantiated, incorporating vendor-specific function elements that may be called by the abstract objects, as necessary. The analysis application program is then able to retrieve and process data from the database by executing function members of the abstract objects (either directly, or by indirectly calling the vendor-specific code), without knowledge of the vendor format of the underlying persistent database.