Our goal is to pioneer this framework, architect it with continual input from the communities that will use it, and implement it efficiently. This framework allows common data management services to be instantiated and specialized for each data system implementation. In addition, science tools can access distributed data based on a standard generic interface. XML, a cutting-edge web technology, gives us a standard for searching for and retrieving data, and for describing data formats. OODT is using XML technology to manage metadata that describes data system contents in a repository that is called a profile.
Tools can use APIs to submit parallel queries to distributed profiles.
Profiles that can support the query will return results of data systems that contain the product, or in some cases it will return a direct hypertext link to the product itself. Products which are inside proprietary databases can be accessed through a capability that OODT is developing called a product server. Product servers wrap legacy data systems and provide a mapping from the OODT query system into the proprietary data system which may be a database, a flat file system, or some other data store. OODT queries can be made using an XML query definition and is supported by both profile and product servers. The Resource Location Service provides the integrated profile and product server environment that allows for queries and products to be searched and retrieved from a distributed data system environment. . .