After new data have been received and logged, the DBMS will automatically check the completeness of the observations. Once the observations are complete, the concatenator will be scheduled. The location of the Concatenator in the pipeline is shown in Fig. 2. Single, complete observations assigned to GOs are identified by the Concatenator which, after consulting the data log, takes several SF and HKF files and reorders their contents to produce a group of single-observation SF and HKF files. When adjacent SF and HKF files are found to share the same instrument mode, bit rate and satellite attitude, they will be merged. The concatenation process is analogous to cutting and pasting and involves no loss of information nor change of format.