Integration is an essential feature of a Data Grid. The Storage
Resource Broker (SRB) middleware
provides a system that enables unified
searching of and access to heterogenous, distributed, data resources on
a very large scale.
The SRB manages distributed data and enables the creation of data
grids
that focus on the sharing of data. It provides uniform access to data
in heterogeneous resources (different databases, different filesystems
etc). The SRB system consists of the SRB client, the SRB server, the
Metadata Catalogue (MCAT) database and the associated MCAT SRB
server(s), which all sit above the archival databases (Oracle,
postgreSQL etc).
SRB is used widely in major National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE) labs in the USA, in the UK e-Science Program and in Australia by QPSF, APAC and their partners.
Data from many on-line databases in multiple
formats can be stored, discovered, searched and accessed by
researchers. In this project SRB will be used to uniformly search and
process data, via its metadata. Data access can be monitored and
restricted as required (for data security, or commercial sensitivity,
privacy requirements, etc.).