Appendix L. OGSA-DAI services specification

L.1. Relating services and resources
L.2. OGSA-DAI WSRF-compliant web services
L.2.1. WSRF and resource IDs
L.2.2. WSRF and services

All OGSA-DAI presentation layers back onto an OGSA-DAI server which manages a number of OGSA-DAI resources. This section outlines the OGSA-DAI web serviced-based presentation layers that OGSA-DAI currently supports.

L.1. Relating services and resources

As there are six types of OGSA-DAI resource, there are six types of OGSA-DAI web service that can be envisaged as being supported by a standard OGSA-DAI web service-based presentation layer.

  • Data Request Execution Service (DRES)

  • Data Resource Information Service (DRIS)

  • Data Sink Service

  • Data Source Service.

  • Session Management Service

  • Request Management Service

Each service provides access to all resources of the corresponding type that reside in the OGSA-DAI server. Operations of the service map directly onto the operations of the corresponding resources. The individual implementations of web service-based presentation layers determine:

  • How the resource of interest is specified to the service.

  • How service operation names and arguments are mapped to resource operation names and arguments.

  • How resource return values and exceptions are mapped to service return values and faults.

An important criterion for OGSA-DAI web services, or indeed any OGSA-DAI presentation layer, is that they should not implement any OGSA-DAI functionality themselves - they should just pass arguments and results to and from the OGSA-DAI server.

L.2. OGSA-DAI WSRF-compliant web services

The default OGSA-DAI web service-based presentation layers are based upon the WSRF specifications.

L.2.1. WSRF and resource IDs

Both clients and servers will typically manipulate OGSA-DAI resource IDs which are simple server-unique names of resources that exist on an OGSA-DAI server.

However, there may be clients that expect WS-EPRs rather than resource IDs (e.g. third party applications). When interacting with OGSA-DAI WSRF-compliant presentation layers there may be a need to obtain WS-EPRs corresponding to these resource IDs.

As WS-EPRs are meant to be opaque to clients OGSA-DAI WSRF-compliant web services need to manage the mapping between resource IDs and associated WS-EPRs.

L.2.2. WSRF and services

The WSRF extension to WS-Addressing - the notion of WS-resource qualified endpoint references - is used to identify to OGSA-DAI web services the resource at which a specific operation is targeted.

For functionality relating to lifetime management and the access of resource properties OGSA-DAI web services implement operations conformant with the WS-ResourceProperties and WS-ResourceLifetime specifications.

In addition, OGSA-DAI port types (groups of related Web service operations) are defined for:

  • DataRequestExecutionPortType - to support exposure of the Execute operation of DRERs.

  • DataSinkPortType - to support exposure of the PutBlock, PutNBlocks and PutFully operations of data sinks.

  • DataSourcePortType - to support exposure of the GetBlock, GetNBlocks and GetFully operations of data sources.

  • WSEPRResolverPortType - to support the conversion of OGSA-DAI resource IDs into WSRF-specific WS-EPRs.

  • IntrinsicsPortType - to support access of generic OGSA-DAI server information, e.g. server version and resources known to a specific service.

The WSRF and OGSA-DAI-specific portTypes are aggregated into services. Each of the six types OGSA-DAI service support operations from the following portTypes:

  • IntrinsicsPortType

  • WSEPRResolverPortType

  • WS-ResourceProperties portTypes

In addition each service supports operations from the following portTypes:

  • Data Request Execution Service - DataRequestExecutionPortType

  • Data Resource Information Service - WS-ResourceLifetime portTypes

  • Data Sink Service - DataSinkPortType and WS-ResourceLifetime portTypes

  • Data Source Service - DataSourcePortType and WS-ResourceLifetime portTypes

  • Session Management Service - WS-ResourceLifetime portTypes

  • Request Management Service - WS-ResourceLifetime portTypes