A metadata catalog for organization and systemization of fusion simulation data

Careful management of data and associated metadata is a critical part of any scientific enterprise. Unfortunately, most current fusion simulation efforts lack systematic, project-wide organization of their data. This paper describes an approach to managing simulation data through creation of a comprehensive metadata catalog, currently under development. The catalog is intended to document all past and current simulation activities (including data provenance); to enable global data location and to facilitate data access, analysis and visualization through uniform provision of metadata. The catalog will capture workflow, holding entries for each simulation activity including, at least, data importing and staging, data pre-processing and input preparation, code execution, data storage, post-processing and exporting. The overall aim is that between the catalog and the main data archive, the system would hold a complete and accessible description of the data, all of its attributes and the processes used to generate the data. The catalog will describe data collections, including those representing simulation workflows as well as any other useful groupings. Finally it would be populated with user supplied comments to explain the motivation and results of any activity documented by the catalog.