[Go-essp-tech] Non-DRS File structure at data nodes

[Gavin M. Bell]

Hi Estani and colleagues, :-)

Okay, so let me jump in for a minute.  There are two notions that are
being conflated in this discussion.  Everyone is used to using paths and
such to find things on the filesystem.  Also people are used to using
tried and true mechanisms that use the filesystem to get to information
remotely by further qualifying the filesystem path with the host.  This
is all well and good for the scope of these tools.

Now we are in a distributed world as we build this ESG*F* (Federation)
that will unify and sew together disparate organizations' data into a
seamless 'dataspace'.  The goal of building such a thing is to make it
easy for all interested in the data to get to data and post data and in
so doing share data in an environment that is fluid.

ESGF is providing a mechanism/platform/infrastructure... that
simultaneously addresses the need for everyone to share data while
maintaining sovereign custody over their data assets.  ESGF has already
met this challenge in many ways.  However, to continue to make the
system simple and easy to use and a joy to use we should alleviate the
requirement of filesystem structure.  This is a particular case where
'some' is good but 'too much' hurts.

So now, cutting to the chase.  More than anecdotal evidence (the length
of this discussion) clearly suggests that strict filesystem adherence is
not in accord with the sovereignty we would like organizations to
enjoy.  It would behoove us to operate the federation such that
descriptors in the context of the federation are divorced from
filesystem structure itself.  This can be achieved rather directly.

Going back to what I initially said, the two notions being conflated
here are the *query* and the *resource*.  An URL, even the filesystem
path itself, is nothing more than a query to the network/operating
system to locate bits on a platter (clearly I am dating myself).  We
should use the DRS as the Federation's canonical locator for resources. 
The DRS is the *query* (in the same spirit as above).  The ESGF system,
just like the filesystem, would resolve the query (DRS) to the
resource.  This, by the way, bears fruit in quite few places in the
system making quite few things more efficient.

I have thought about this particular filesystem problem and have come up
with a solution... the solution would allow us to still use tools like
wget/curl right out of the box and with a little bit of tweaking gridftp
and globus.  As a matter of fact the solution would lend itself to being
used by any tool old or new.  To more directly address Estani's
questions about *relying* on things.... I don't think that the tone of
that should be so pejorative.  You *use* a tool because it helps you. I
feel that using the ESGF infrastructure is useful to the community and
the communities goals.  I don't think that it is too much skin in the
game to ask for.  If things go horribly wrong, your organization has
it's own filesystem structure that fits their needs that they can rely
on in order to make sense of things as they see it.  So, fundamentally
the act of scanning the data is what provides the cohesion between the
DRS and filesystem structure.  The job of scanning is certainly not
terribly laborious.  So there is quite literally very *little* cost to
"relying" on a system/infrastructure/set of tools that is ESGF,
especially compared to the benefit of what ESGF can bring to this
community. I find it hard to conjure a cogent argument against creating
a flexible system, especially given the nature of this
multi-organization, international effort. We must make it easy for
organizations to be independent and not push a myopic view (IMHO) of a
certain state of the world on everyone.

Thank you for reading this rather lengthy email... I need an in-house
editor perhaps... I tend to get garrulous but I wanted to be as clear as
I could.

If there isn't already a working group on this I would like to propose
one, we can set it up on the ESGF wiki and talk more about this.  :-)

P.S.
In 10 years ESGF will have morphed into something even more lovely...
because it is build by the all of us and nurtured on our wisdom :-). 
The will be the tool people count on and rely on as you alluded to with
ftp, et. al.  There is no tomorrow without today (modulo the quantum
mechanics fridge).

On 9/2/11 2:55 AM, Estanislao Gonzalez wrote:
> I know the main idea is to create a middleware layer that would make
> file structures obsolete. But then, we will have to write all tools
> again in order to interact with this intermediate level or at least
> patch them somehow. gridFTP, as well as ftp, are only useful as
> transmission protocols, you can't write your own script to use them,
> you have to rely on either the gateway or the datanode to find what
> you are looking.
> In my opinion, we will be relying too much in the ESG infrastructure.
> What would happen if we loose the publisher database? How would we
> tell apart one version from another, if this is not represented in the
> directory structure?
> My fear is that if we keep separating the metadata from the data
> itself, we add a new weak link in the chain. Now if we loose the
> metadata the data will also be useless (this would be indeed the worst
> case scenario). In 10 years we will have no idea what this interfaces
> were like, probably both data node and gateways will be superseded  by
> newer versions that can't translate our old requirements. But as I
> said, that's a problem for LTAs only. In any case, we need the
> middleware to provide some services and speed things up, but I don't
> think we should rely blindly on it.

-- 
Gavin M. Bell
--

 "Never mistake a clear view for a short distance."
       	       -Paul Saffo


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucar.edu/pipermail/go-essp-tech/attachments/20110902/3f2bb79f/attachment.html