Metadata-based information management framework for grids

Information service is a key component of a Grid environment and crucial to the operation of Grids. This chapter presents an information management framework for a Grid virtual organization (VO). This information management framework is a hierarchical structure which consists of VO layer, site layer and resource layer. We propose different models of information data organization for information management in Grids and simulation experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of these models. Based on the experimental results, we further introduce the data organization model for our information management framework. A performance evaluation conducted on a cross-domain Grid testbed indicates that our information management framework presents good scalability with large number of concurrent users and large amount of information aggregated. In this chapter some application experiences of using the information management framework are also presented.