AstroGrid-D: Enhancing Astronomic Science with Grid Technology

We present AstroGrid-D, a project bringing together astronomers and experts in Grid technology to enhance astronomic science in many aspects. First, by sharing currently dispersed resources, scientists can calculate their models in more detail. Second, by developing new mechanisms to efficiently access and process existing datasets, scientific problems can be investigated that were until now impossible to solve. Third, by adopting Grid technology large instruments such as robotic telescopes and complex scientific workflows from data aquisition to analysis can be managed in an integrated manner. In this paper, we present prominent astronomic use cases, discuss requirements on a Grid middleware and present our approach to extend/augment existing middleware to facilitate the improvements mentioned above

Stellaris: An RDF-based Information Service for AstroGrid-D

We present Stellaris, the information service of the community project AstroGrid-D. Stellaris is the core component of the AstroGrid-D middleware that enables scientists to share their resources, provides access to large datasets and integrates instruments such as robotic telescopes. Besides the many diverse types of resources, the information service also supports a wide range of use cases each using a specific schema for the metadata. In addition, Stellaris addresses the distributed and dynamic nature of collaborations in the astronomers’ community. Stellaris satisfies these requirements by adopting RDF and SPARQL for storing and querying metadata. Our paper focuses on the requirements of the community, presents the architecture of the information service in detail and discusses experiences with the prototype already in use by partners within the project

AstroGrid-D: Enhancing Astronomic Science with Grid Technology

We present AstroGrid-D, a project bringing together astronomers and experts in Grid technology to enhance astronomic science in many aspects. First, by sharing currently dispersed resources, scientists can calculate their models in more detail. Second, by developing new mechanisms to efficiently access and process existing datasets, scientific problems can be investigated that were until now impossible to solve. Third, by adopting Grid technology large instruments such as robotic telescopes and complex scientific workflows from data aquisition to analysis can be managed in an integrated manner. In this paper, we present prominent astronomic use cases, discuss requirements on a Grid middleware and present our approach to extend/augment existing middleware to facilitate the improvements mentioned above

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We present Stellaris, the information service of the community project AstroGrid-D. Stellaris is the core component of the AstroGrid-D middleware that enables scientists to share their resources, provides access to large datasets and integrates instruments such as robotic telescopes. Besides the many diverse types of resources, the information service also supports a wide range of use cases each using a specific schema for the metadata. In addition, Stellaris addresses the distributed and dynamic nature of collaborations in the astronomers ’ community. Stellaris satisfies these requirements by adopting RDF and SPARQL for storing and querying metadata. Our paper focuses on the requirements of the community, presents the architecture of the information service in detail and discusses experiences with the prototype already in use by partners within the project.