High-level User Interface for Accessing Database Resources on the Grid

Abstract

Data access in Grid systems and applications focused on managing flat files only, until recently. However, many scientific and industry applications rely on data stored in relational or other databases. The OGSA-DAI project developed a widely utilised middleware tool that enables accessing and managing a various database products through uniform Web service interfaces. As OGSA-DAI is a middleware level solution, it cannot be utilised by end users directly. Although research projects have developed user interfaces for specific OGSA-DAI based applications, these cannot be applied for more ad-hoc tasks. In order to fill this gap, a set of comprehensive and function-rich user interfaces were developed to expose OGSA-DAI functionalities. The portlets can be used in a wide range of applications and enable a much wider take-up of OGSA-DAI, as it is illustrated on the example of a data mining application on a UK National Healthcare database.