Global Data Grids for 21st Century Science

Paul Avery

Department of Physics

University of Florida

Twenty-first century scientific and engineering enterprises are increasingly characterized by their geographic dispersion and their reliance on large data archives. These characteristics bring with them unique challenges. First, the increasing size and complexity of modern data collections require significant investments in information technologies to store, retrieve and analyze them. Second, the increased distribution of people and resources in these projects has made resource sharing and collaboration across significant geographic and organizational boundaries critical to their success.

In this talk I explore how computing infrastructures based on Data Grids offer data intensive enterprises a comprehensive, scalable framework for collaboration and resource sharing. The experience gained with these new information systems, providing transparent managed access to massive distributed data collections, will be applicable to large-scale data-intensive problems in a wide spectrum of scientific and engineering disciplines, and eventually in industry and commerce. Such systems will be needed in the coming decades as a central element of our information-based society.