Since 2003, a coherent data management approach was envisaged for the needs of installing, commissioning, operating and maintaining the LHC. Data repositories in the distinct domains of physical equipment, installed components, controls configuration and operational data have been established to cater for these different aspects. The interdependencies between the domains have been implemented as a distributed database. This approach, based on a very wide data foundation, has been used for the LHC and is being extended to the CERN accelerator complex.