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9–11 May 2007
Manchester, United Kingdom
Europe/Zurich timezone

G-DSE: Grid – Data Source Engine

10 May 2007, 10:00
20m
Manchester, United Kingdom

Manchester, United Kingdom

oral presentation Data Management Data Management

Speaker

Dr Giuliano Taffoni (INAF-OA Trieste)

Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).

The G-DSE was developed to allow astrophysical applications running in Grid to
access data in astronomical databases, so it was mainly thought to meet a
specific problem of the astrophysical community. On G-DSE enabled Grids
astronomers are able to discover astronomical databases as any other Grid
resource, access them and also use abstract database machines to process
data. Thanks to the G-DSE two basic tools for astronomers (the Grid and the
Virtual Observatory) can be naturally integrated.

Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.

The G-DSE was thought and developed in the framework of GRID.IT, a
multidisciplinary project for an Italian Grid infrastructure. The first experiments
with the G-DSE took place on the INFN Grid infrastructure. Because the
development of the G-DSE was resumed only recently, an effort was firstly
made to guarantee the compatibility with the current production Grid
infrastructure. The next step is to produce a gLite-compatible version of the G-
DSE. Tests carried out with the first versions were extremely encouraging. A
test campaign is now in progress between INAF, INFN and SPACI for a
comparison of different technologies, namely OGSA-DAI, GRelC and G-DSE,
aiming at integrating the Grid and Databases.

Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications

Astronomical applications (often related to large scale projects like the
simulations of the ESA Planck mission) are both computing intensive and data
intensive. The usage of the Grid is the right answer to overcome the shortage
of computing power resources paining each institution/consortium participating
to such projects. The G-DSE makes possible to use the same technology (the
Grid) to access computing power and astronomical databases. The IVO
(International Virtual Observatory) is a world-wide effort of the astronomical
community to define standards for the federation of astronomical databases.
The IVO is a Grid of databases devoid of computational resources. The G-DSE is
able to bridge the Grid and the IVO, so a new, large community, can benefit of
the Grid technology. Although the G-DSE was thought to solve an issue related
to astronomical applications, it can be used to access generic databases via
Grid, so other scientific communities can benefit of it.

With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)

The G-DSE is the low-level middleware component of a Grid Query Element. In
practice, it involves modifications on the basic components of a Grid resource
(GRAM and GIS) so that the new "Database" Grid resource can be discovered
and used as any other resource. On the basis of the G-DSE design no
modification on the high level services is required. We don't expect technical
problems in replicating this also in gLite.

Primary authors

Dr Claudio Vuerli (INAF-OA Trieste) Dr Giuliano Taffoni (INAF-OA Trieste)

Co-authors

Mr Andrea Barisani (INAF-OA Trieste) Dr Fabio Pasian (INAF-OA Trieste) Dr Valeria Manna (INAF-OA Trieste)

Presentation materials