Data management in HEP: An approach

Abstract.

In this work we describe an approach to data access and data management in High Energy Physics (HEP), which privileges performance, simplicity and scalability, in storage systems that co-operate. We also show why the typical HEP workload is well positioned to access geographically distributed data repositories and then weigh the advantages and disadvantages of accessing data across the Wide Area Network. We discuss some points related to the architecture that a data access/management system should have in order to exploit these possibilities. Currently, this kind of methods were explored by using the xrootd/Scalla software suite, that is a workable example of a distributed non-transactional data repository for the HEP environment. The Scalla architecture naturally allows us to build globally federated repositories congruent with diverse HEP collaborations and their data access needs. These methodologies, however, are based on the concept of caching associated to a performant messaging system and to an efficient way of accessing data through Wide Area Network, thus they can be applied to other data access systems as well.