D2.4 Blue-Cloud Data Discovery and Access service

The Blue Cloud data discovery and access service is one of the components of the Blue-Cloud technical framework. It serves federated discovery and access to a range of blue data infrastructures for external users and also will interact with the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (the component federating computing platforms and analytical services). The pilot Blue-Cloud project aims at federating initially in total 10 blue data infrastructures. Each of these existing infrastructures have been described earlier in deliverable D2.1 - Blue Data Infrastructures – Services Description Report, in particular with a focus on their current data discovery and access mechanisms. And further analyses have taken place concerning the web services and APIs that each of the existing infrastructures are providing for machine-to-machine interactions. The results of those analyses have been described in deliverable D2.2 - Blue Data Infrastructures – Services Analysis Report.

The conceptual approach and architecture for the Blue Cloud data discovery and access service have been further developed and are described in deliverables D2.6 – Blue Cloud Architecture (1st Release) and D2.7 – Blue Cloud Architecture (2nd Release). Part of the concept is to rely fully on machine-to-machine interactions between the Blue-Cloud service and each of the blue data infrastructures. Another part of the concept is a two-step approach to discovery from data collections to data granules, where possible, and applying search criteria from coarse (level 1) to fine (level 2), while the second level can be completed by actual ordering and retrieval of associated data sets.

The underlying report describes the actual development and deployment of the Beta-version of the Blue-Cloud Data Discovery and Access service. Implementing the conceptual approach has largely depended on the existing and available web services and APIs at the blue data infrastructures. Therefore, this report describes what services and what solutions were adopted overall as well as per blue data infrastructure to deploy the requested concept and functionality.

The actual launch of the Beta-version of the Blue-Cloud Data Discovery and Access service is planned in the middle of June 2021.