19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Open Communication

Towards e-Science: Scientific Database (SDB) and its applications in a new stage

Baoping YAN (ybp@cnic.ac.cn), Kai NAN (nankai@cnic.ac.cn)
Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China


Scientific Database is a long-term project supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and several ministries of China government since early 1980s. With the 10th five-year program (2001-2005) in China, Scientific Database has been funded as a special project of CAS Informatization Program and come into a new stage of development. As far as the end of 2003, SDB has more than 8.2TB scientific data, which is accumulated by 45 institutes of CAS.  At the turn of the century, E-Science was emerging and became a key concept for scientists in this Information Age. While we believe that e-Science will be a crucial trend which we should follow to improve methods and environment for research by taking advantage of information technologies, we also deem that scientific data must be one of footstones of e-Science. Certainly, SDB will play an important role in the way of e-Science in CAS. And then, Scientific Data Grid has been built upon the data of SDB with the grid technology, which is commonly thought as a key enabling technology of e-Science. In the rest of the 10th five-year program, several advanced applications on SDB will be co-developed by both domain scientists and .computer experts. Those would make use of middleware provided by Scientific Data Grid and be pilot applications towards e-Science.  Now the planning for the 11th five-year program (2006-2010) is starting off. E-Science has been chosen as the main theme of CAS Informatization Program in that period. Undoubtedly Scientific Database will step up into a new stage once more and it will aim at e-Science this time.  This paper will firstly summarize the development of Scientific Database and give an update on its status and Scientific Data Grid. Then, our opinions about e-Science will be introduced, including analysis of requirements for SDB advanced applications towards e-Science. At last, there are a few instances of pilot applications and some ideas regarding e-Science in the 11th five-year program of CAS.