Speaker
Dr
Alexandre Vaniachine
(ANL)
Description
High energy and nuclear physics applications on computational grids require efficient
access to terabytes of data managed in relational databases. Databases also play a
critical role in grid middleware: file catalogues, monitoring, etc. Crosscutting the
computational grid infrastructure, a hyperinfrastructure of the databases emerges.
The Database Access for Secure Hyperinfrastructure (DASH) project develops secure
high-performance database access technology for distributed computing. To overcome
database access inefficiencies inherent in a traditional middleware approach the DASH
project implements secure authorization on the transport level. Pushing the grid
authorization into the database engine eliminates the middleware message-level
security layer and delivers transport-level efficiency of SSL/TLS protocols for grid
applications. The database architecture with embedded grid authorization provides a
foundation for secure end-to-end data processing solutions for the experiments.
To avoid a brittle, monolithic system DASH uses an aspect-oriented programming
approach. By localizing Globus security concerns in a software aspect, DASH achieves
a clean separation of Globus Grid Security Infrastructure dependencies from the MySQL
server code. During the database server build, the AspectC++ tool automatically
generates the transport-level code to support a grid security infrastructure.
The DASH proof-of-concept prototype provides Globus grid proxy certificate
authorization technologies for MySQL database access control. Direct access to
database servers unleashes a broad range of MySQL server functionalities for HENP
data processing applications: binary data transport, XA transactions, etc.
Prototype servers built with DASH technology are being tested in ANL, BNL, and CERN.
To provide on-demand database services capability for Open Science Grid, the Edge
Services Framework activity builds the DASH mysql-gsi database server into the
virtual machine image, which is dynamically deployed via Globus Virtual Workspaces.
The DASH project is funded by the U.S. DOE Small Business Innovative Research Program.
Summary
Project DASH builds the grid-enabled MySQL database.
Authors
Dr
Alexandre Vaniachine
(ANL)
David Malon
(ANL)
Dmitry Ratnikov
(ANL)
Edward May
(ANL)
John Weicher
(PIOCON Technologies)
Matthew Vranicar
(PIOCON Technologies)
