A web-based, dynamic metadata interface to MDSplus

We introduce the concept of a Fusion Data Grid and discuss the management of metadata within such a Grid. We describe a prototype application which serves fusion data over the internet together with metadata information which can be flexibly created and modified over time. The application interfaces with the MDSplus data acquisition system and it has been designed to capture metadata which is generated by scientists from the post-processing of experimental data. The implementation of dynamic metadata tables using the Java programming language together with an object-relational mapping system, Hibernate, is described in the Appendix.