Middleware for Scientific Data Grid

Deting Yang

Authors: Kai NAN and Deting Yang
Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Scientific Database (SDB) 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 2005, SDB has more than 16.6TB scientific data, which is accumulated by 45 institutes of CAS.

The arising challenges for information retrieval in modern research are how to uniformly access and integrate large scale, distributed and heterogeneous scientific data, promote convenient sharing of scientific data resources and enhance efficiency and utility of sharing data resources. We try to resolve the key problems through the research of Scientific Data Grid (SDG). SDG  aims to integrate different resources in informatization environment of scientific research, i.e. scientific data and computing capacity for data analysis and process, connect 45 institutes via data resources in SDB, realize effective sharing of distributed and heterogeneous data resources by applying Grid technology, especially data Grid technology, and develop some application systems that have practical importance for scientific research..

This paper will firstly summarize the requirements for Scientific Data Grid from current scientific research. Then the architecture and the update status of SDG will be introduced. At last, there are a few instances of pilot applications and some ideas regarding e-Science in the 11th five-year program of CAS.