System and method for integrated data transfer, archiving and purging of semiconductor wafer data

A system for the integrated archiving, restoring, purging, importing and exporting of semiconductor wafer data, the system including: a data acquisition system 00 for acquiring scan data from differing types of semiconductor wafer scanning tools such as wafer dimensional tools 10, wafer inspection tools 12, and wafer nanotopography tools 14; a buffer system 02 for providing temporary storage for scan data transmitted over a network from the data acquisition system and for providing fault tolerance; a server system 04 for providing storage for the scan data transmitted from the buffer system 02 and converting the scan data into a format used by and stored in a database 08 management system; and an analysis system 06 client station including a display and communicating with the server system 04 over the network, the analysis system 06 and the server system 04 managing the purging, archiving, restoring, importing and exporting of scan data.