SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
SDI Convergence - Nederlandse Commissie voor Geodesie - KNAW
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An Analysis of Technology Choices for Data Grids in a Spatial<br />
Data Infrastructure<br />
Serena Coetzee and Judith Bishop<br />
Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa<br />
{scoetzee, jbishop}@cs.up.ac.za<br />
Abstract<br />
The concept of grid computing has permeated all areas of distributed computing,<br />
changing the way in which distributed systems are designed, developed and implemented.<br />
Data grids enable the sharing of data in a virtual organisation and are typically<br />
implemented for data federation in data-intensive environments. So far, they have been<br />
applied to traditional data (text, image, sound). We present a scenario that describes<br />
for the first time how data grids can be applied to enable the sharing of address data in<br />
a spatial data infrastructure (<strong>SDI</strong>). Consolidating spatial data from distributed heterogeneous<br />
sources into a single centralised dataset requires, amongst others, a considerable<br />
human coordination effort. A data grid consolidates data directly from the distributed<br />
sources, thereby eliminating the effort. We present a reference model called<br />
Compartimos (Spanish for ‘we share’), that is based on the Open Grid Services Architecture<br />
(OGSA) but is customised for sharing address data in an <strong>SDI</strong>, and we analyse<br />
existing technologies, such as the Globus Toolkit, ISO 19100 standards and Open<br />
Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web service implementation specifications, for Compartimos.<br />
This article advances the mutual understanding between data grids and <strong>SDI</strong>s<br />
and sheds light on a future technological solution that could overcome some of the<br />
data sharing impediments that are experienced in <strong>SDI</strong>s today. Finally, results from the<br />
analysis and future directions for research are discussed.<br />
Keywords: spatial data infrastructure (<strong>SDI</strong>), data grid, data sharing, service-orientation,<br />
web service, grid computing, address data, geographic information, GIS.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
A grid is a system that is concerned with the integration, virtualisation, and management<br />
of services and resources in a distributed, heterogeneous environment that supports<br />
virtual organisations (collections of users and resources) across traditional administrative<br />
and organisational domains (real organisations). A data grid is a special<br />
kind of grid in which data resources are shared and coordinated (OGF, 2007b). How<br />
virtual organisations collaborate and share resources in order to achieve a common<br />
goal is described as the ‘grid architecture’ in The Anatomy of the Grid (Foster et al.,<br />
2001) and The Physiology of the Grid (Foster et al., 2002). This has subsequently<br />
evolved into the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) published by the Open Grid<br />
Forum (OGF, 2006), a vision of a broadly applicable and adopted framework for grids.<br />
The OGSA data architecture (OGF, 2007a) describes the interfaces, behaviours and<br />
bindings for manipulating data within the broader OGSA.<br />
The work reported in this article is part of a research project on ‘Distributed Address<br />
Management’, which has the objective of establishing whether the data grid approach<br />
is an option for national address databases in an <strong>SDI</strong> and if so, what the design imperatives<br />
for such an approach are. In earlier work, we used a novel evaluation framework<br />
for national address databases to evaluate existing information federation models,<br />
as well as the data grid approach, for the use in address databases for national<br />
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