A Multidisciplinary, Model-Driven, Distributed Science Data System Architecture

Abstract

The twenty-first century has transformed the world of science by breaking the physical boundaries of distributed organizations and interconnecting them into virtual science environments, allowing for systems and systems of systems to seamlessly access and share information and resources across highly geographically distributed areas. This e-science transformation is enabling new scientific discoveries by allowing for greater collaboration as well as by enabling systems to combine and correlate disparate data sets. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, we have been developing science data systems for highly distributed communities in physical and life sciences that require extensive sharing of distributed services and common information models based on common architectures. The common architecture contributes a set of atomic functions, interfaces, and information models that support sharing and distributed processing. Additionally, the architecture provides a blueprint for a software product line known as the Object Oriented Data Technology (OODT) framework. OODT has enabled reuse of software for science data generation, capture and management, and delivery across highly distributed organizations for planetary science, earth science, and cancer research. Our experience to date shows that a well-defined architecture and set of accompanied software vastly improves our ability to develop road maps for and to construct virtual science environments.