A modular access control architecture for the Earth system grid federation
Philip J. Kershaw, Rachana Ananthakrishnan, L. Cinquini, Dennis M. Heimbigner, BRYAN N LAWRENCE · CentAUR (University of Reading) · 2011
We present key aspects of the federated access control solution required for the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), including a standard mechanism for securing OPeNDAP-based services and corresponding extensions to the NetCDF software libraries to support this paradigm. ESGF is an international collaboration to enable access to Earth science data – beginning with a deployment in support of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, phase 5, a framework of climate model experiments whose results will be available in a distributed, globally accessible archive. By maintaining a separation of concerns between the various aspects of the system, it has been possible to devise a highly flexible access control architecture adaptable to the spectrum of needs presented. Such a modular approach is only possible through the definition of interfaces: at the inter-organisational level with web services and at the application level with the use of server side middleware and REST-based principles.