7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

7. Virtual Data Centres
Virtual Data centers can be created using the huge collection of Scientific & Technical
data across the units. Collection based research can be done using the strong and
intelligent query models suiting the research of scientific community for proper
visualization of data to unearth the hidden facts.
Data-handling systems for scientific data must be very flexible, since it is often not known
how the data will be used when the system is being designed. Scientific users often want
to write their own programs and run these on a server; besides security problems,
designers must try to accommodate a variety of languages and a variety of levels of
expertise.
The scientific community, with its focus on research, has pioneered many concepts that
were eventually accepted by the commercial world and the same results can be expected
out of research carried out using the Virtual Data Centres.
8. Preservation, Security and Authentication of Databases
The period for which the scientific and technical data be preserved depends on the value of
the data into the future, and also on the cost of maintaining the data in a usable state.
Sometimes, the content of a database can be reproduced at reasonable cost, in which case
there is no need to worry about long-term preservation.
It may also be that the scientific value of the data can be completely extracted within a
year or so of the data being created, in which case it can, in principle, be deleted. But the
reality is that we cannot always be sure that there is nothing more. Creators of scientific
databases should be encouraged to consider in advance how the database will be used in
the future. To facilitate preservation, there is a need for a clear designation of what
constitutes the boundaries of a given information object, and a need to resolve pointers
within the data object to other data, such as local file names, directory paths, web
hyperlinks etc.
Collection based research would call for internet access for which there must be sufficient
access control to assure the safety of proprietary data. Establishing policies and
mechanisms that provide the access control are equally important and have to coexist with
other security mechanisms. Access and control policies should be clear and unambiguous
to those who create and use scientific data. The data may be public, or it may be restricted
to a group of users listed explicitly or by domain name.
One should encourage projects that demonstrate easy to use, yet strong, authentication
schemes, including ways to issue usage-permission to valid users, ways to log usage, ways
to provide different levels of authentication. A most important facet of this problem is
authentication in distributed systems, so that a user only needs to log-in once, yet multiple,
heterogeneous services can be enabled as a result.
9. Conclusion
Our centre being one of the leading organizations in the country, carrying out large scale
Research & Development projects produce a very large amount of Scientific & Technical
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