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The OGSA Data Architecture

One of my many hats is as co-chair of the OGSA Data working group of the Open Grid Forum. We work on the data-oriented aspects of the Open Grid Services Architecture (see also here), covering the description, movement, access, replication, federation and storage of data in a Grid environment. Our aim is to provide a framework that links existing standards with those in development, and to show gaps that are not currently covered by standards work.

We had a fruitful face-to-face meeting here in Edinburgh last week, in which we concentrated on the descriptions of the interfaces in the architecture. The architecture is really a toolbox of data services that can be composed in various ways to address a range of use cases. As I expected, this focus helped us to to describe in greater detail how the various components will work together.

I believe we should have a draft of the architecture ready for public comment soon. I'm looking forward to actually completing this work. It's been a slow process, as we have had to bring various distributed groups on board throughout, but that's the only way to create a standard that will actually have any effect in the real world.

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