Grid metadata management: Requirements and architecture

Metadata annotations of grid resources can potentially be used for a number of purposes, including accurate resource allocation to jobs, discovery of services, and precise retrieval of information resources. In order to realize this potential on a large scale, various aspects of metadata must be managed. These include uniform and secure access to distributed and independently maintained metadata repositories, as well as management of metadata lifecycle. In this paper we analyze these issues and present a service-oriented architecture for metadata management, called S-OGSA, that addresses them in a systematic way.