Overview
The Data Intensive Cyber Environments Center (DICE) provides expertise and the iRODS software technology to support the large-scale data management needed for collaborative research, digital archiving, and long-term data preservation. DICE staff collaborate on RENCI projects in a wide range of fields such as health informatics, disaster research, hydrology, cloud storage, classroom video archiving, and visualization data grids.
Overview
The Data Intensive Cyber Environments Center (DICE) provides expertise and the iRODS software technology to support the large-scale data management needed for collaborative research, digital archiving, and long-term data preservation. DICE staff collaborate on RENCI projects in a wide range of fields such as health informatics, disaster research, hydrology, cloud storage, classroom video archiving, and visualization data grids.
iRODS
The DICE Center addresses data management challenges with its software, the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS), and works with RENCI on developing and maintaining data grids based on iRODS. The iRODS technology organizes distributed data into sharable collections, manages properties of the collections, and enforces management policies. iRODS is middleware—software that is installed at each location where data may be stored. It includes an adaptive rule engine for locally enforcing policies for access, retention, disposition, distribution, replication, integrity, authenticity, trustworthiness, caching, quotas, and more.
iRODS provides scientists with a secure, scalable system that can support all stages of the data life cycle by evolving its management policies over time. A collection starts as a project-specific data repository, then evolves into a data grid for sharing with other institutions. It then evolves into a digital library with formal, published data, and finally into a preservation environment that manages reference collections for use by future researchers.
The iRODS software is open source and is available at the iRODS website. Developers around the world have made significant contributions to iRODS, including:
- a driver for accessing flickr
- a driver for accessing Amazon EC2 cloud storage
- a driver for accessing a web page
- clients for WebDAV access
- clients for Taverna workflow access
- a monitoring system
- a quota system
- reliable blast UDP transport
Communities using the iRODS software to manage data grids and digital libraries include:
- RENCI
- Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies, Inc. (TUCASI)
- Carolina Digital Repository
- UNC Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science
- National Archives and Records Administration Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype
- Odum Institute for Research in Social Science
- National Science Foundation Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center
- National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories Initiative
- French National Library
- Texas Digital Library
- Australian Research Collaboration Service
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
- European Union project on Sustaining Heritage Access through Multivalent ArchiviNg
- iPlant Collaborative
- Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc.
- National Science Foundation TeraGrid
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory
- National Climatic Data Center
- Duke Medical Archive
- Institute National Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics, Lyon France
- Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Funding
National Archives and Records Administration
National Science Foundation
National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Awards
National Historical Publications and Records Commission
National Historical Publications and Records Commission
UNC Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science
RENCI (State of North Carolina)
DICE team
Reagan Moore
Sheau-Yen Chen
Mike Conway
Chien-Yi Hou
Richard Marciano
Arcot Rajasekar
Wayne Schroeder
Paul Tooby
Antoine de Torcy
Mike Wan
Bing Zhu
Links
DICE
iRODS wiki
