CLIENT SERVICE MIDDLEWARE
The Storage Resource Broker (SRB) was developed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) as client-server middleware to provide a uniform interface for connecting to heterogeneous data resources over a network and accessing replicated data sets. SRB, in conjunction with the Metadata Catalog (MCAT), provides a way to access data sets and resources based on their attributes rather than their names or physical locations. The latest release of the software is v1.1.8; 2/16/01. The Virtual Object Ring Buffer (VORB) software extends the SRB concept to real-time data (see figure below).

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VIRTUAL OBJECT RING BUFFERS
Object Ring Buffers (ORB) have been used successfully for capturing real-time data from seismic networks. ORB's provide a means to capture data in real-time and store them for immediate use as well as archive them for later analysis. ORB's expose the data they are holding through a well-defined Application Programming Interface (API) and also encapsulate their raw data with additional metadata information. In order to enhance the capability of ORB's for real-time data exchange and dynamic reconfiguration of data flow in federated sensor networks, we have defined and implemented Virtual ORB's (or VORB) that can be used to provide transparency and independence from physical ORB implementations.

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