ITR: (ASE+NHS) - (int+dmc): Constraint-based Knowledge Systems for Grids, Digital Libraries, and Persistent Archives

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The management of massive amounts of data, whether in scientific collections, education curricula repositories, or persistent archives, is an essential part of the conduct of science and education. Each type of data management system requires the application of multiple constraints: data sharing (sociological controls on group interactions, access controls), data display (transformative migrations of content, group specific view mechanisms), data federation (consistency management) and data control (data placement, data synchronization). The constraints may be organized in a hierarchy as global constraints, rule-based object constraints, and process based transformative constraints. This project investigates the specification of constraint granularity, the implementation of constraint languages, and the development of data management systems that support dynamic constraint specification and application. The software is based on the Storage Resource Broker data grid technology that supports federation of digital libraries and scientific collections across academic institutions. The broader impact of the project will be the development of adaptive middleware technologies for distributed data management. Examples include the addition of services to grid environments that preserve consistent metadata management, the addition of services to digital library systems that validate new metadata attributes for new collections, and the addition of services to preservation environments that manage authenticity of archived material. Our goal is to create generic distributed data management infrastructure that can be used at the institution level, within national scale projects such as NSF Information Technology Research efforts, and within international academic collaborations such as the Worldwide Universities Network.