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1. Introduction

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Introduction to the GRIA OGSA-DAI Service

Overview

The GRIA OGSA-DAI service package is a package built around OGSA-DAI WS-I 2.2. It allows clients using the OGSA-DAI libraries access to data resources through a GRIA service. The OGSA-DAI service can be deployed on its own to provide unmanaged access to databases, or it can be used with the GRIA service provider management package to take advantage of its billing and service level agreement functionality.

The software package comes complete with the necessary components to allow the service to query JDBC databases and create new databases in PostgreSQL and MySQL. By following the service developers' guide it is easy to add in the capability to connect to additional RDBMS or other (non-SQL) database systems.

Added Value

The GRIA OGSA-DAI service's focus is on providing a secure system with low maintenance costs, ideal for business deployments.

 

Easy deployment
The GRIA OGSA-DAI service is provided as a WAR file, ready to be dropped into a standard servlet container such as Tomcat.
Easy configuration
The service provides a web-based configuration and management interface.
GRIA's standard security features
  • Dynamic security policies to control access to databases and database accounts
  • Transport level security using SSL
  • Message level security (WS-Security), providing message authentication and integrity checks
OGSA-DAI session security
The service uses a custom session manager to ensure the security of an OGSA-DAI session.

By also linking the GRIA OGSA-DAI service to the GRIA service provider management package (available separately), additional features are made available:

  • Monitoring of databases
  • Restricting access to databases by way of service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Billing for database access

Components

A GRIA OGSA-DAI service
This is the server component that provides the interfaces for accessing and creating data resources on servers. The service administrator can choose which users are allowed to create and use data resources. The service can be extended to connect to any data resource. Connectors for PostgreSQL and MySQL are provided.

 

A plugin for the graphical GRIA client
This plugin adds functionality to the graphical GRIA client, enabling clients to access and manage their databases without having to write their own Java applications. While this plugin provides a useful way of experimenting with and demonstrating the OGSA-DAI service, real-world applications would make use of one of the programmatical interfaces.
An AXIS plugin for OGSA-DAI clients
Clients wishing to access databases using the OGSA-DAI client library can install this component to make their SOAP calls compatible with the GRIA authentication and access control systems. Using this component allows GRIA OGSA-DAI services to be accessed just like regular OGSA-DAI services, meaning existing database applications require only minor changes to become compatible with GRIA.
A Java Client API
Clients can use this Java interface to access GRIA OGSA-DAI resources from their own applications.
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