OGSA-DAI

Welcome to the OGSA-DAI Project!

Since 2002 the OGSA-DAI Project has been working to develop an effective solution to the challenge of Internet-scale data integration. Our product - OGSA-DAI™ - is a middleware bundle that allows data resources, such as file systems, relational or XML databases, to be accessed, federated and integrated across the network.

OGSA-DAI's Vision

OGSA-DAI is about sharing data resources to enable collaboration. It's about:

Data access

accessing structured data in distributed heterogeneous data resources

Data transformation

for example, exposing data in schema X to users as data in schema Y

Data integration

for example, exposing multiple databases to users as a single virtual database

Data delivery

delivering data to where it's needed by the most appropriate means: web service, e-mail, HTTP, FTP, GridFTP

OGSA-DAI in Action

LaQuAT: Linking and Querying Ancient Texts

OGSA-DAI provides uniform access to distributed heterogeneous databases of ancient texts and allows queries to be run over these as if they were a single database.

The aim of the LaQuAT project was to exploit OGSA-DAI in the domain of epigraphy. Epigraphy is concerned with the study of ancient texts e.g. books, papryi, inscriptions on stone tablets or parchments. Information about these texts are gathered and stored in databases. This information includes what the artifact is, where it was found, where it originates from, when it is thought to date from, what the incription says, and myriad other information. The data may be in relational, XML, plain-text or other non-standard formats, and different researchers may use their own formats. As there are numerous researchers in the field, the data is distributed globally.

LaQuAT is a collaboration between the Centre for e-Research Kings College, London and EPCC, The University of Edinburgh. It is funded by JISC via the ENGAGE project. A LaQuAT demonstrator is available on the National Grid Service. The project ran from October 2008 to March 2009.
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