Database Grid: Grid-oriented Database Resources Management Platform

Grid is the next-generation Internet Computing platform. The key task of Grid aims at the management of a variety of software and hardware resources distributed across the Internet wide-area based environment, which compose a uniform and virtual computing platform of shared resources. As a pilar of Grid computing model. Grid data management has always been an intensive research issue. Currently most efforts of Grid data management research are concentrated on sharing of file-based information resources, while rarely involving database systems. However, a large number of Grid applications from the scientific and commercial domains are in great need of database support. Therefore, how to integrate database into the existing Grid infrastructure so as to widely fulfill the data management requirements from Grid applications, has become an impending research topic.This thesis begins with the analysis of application requirement of data resource sharing and collaborative management in the dynamic and open Grid context, and proposes the concept of Database Grid, based on a combination of the current means of data-resource centered information sharing and semantic integration. Database Grid, compatible with the existing Grid architecture specification OGSA, is a database resource management platform oriented to the Grid computing environment. With a backbone on semantic integration of database resources, Database Grid offers solutions to a series of Grid resource management problems, such as resource access, semantic discovery and dynamic integration. This thesis introduces the principle of Database Grid, describes its layered service architecture and defines the database-centered resource sharing rules on the Grid in form of protocols. The key effort of this thesis focuses on the Database Grid protocols, which are intended to provide a set of reference specification for database-oriented resource management issues. This thesis also describes design and implementation of a prototype system named DartGrid, which conforms to the Database Grid protocols. Finally we introduce an application testbed in the domain of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in which Database Grid is applied to.