Policy-based data management enables the creation of community-specific collections. Every collection is created for a purpose. The purpose defines the set of properties that will be associated with the collection. The properties are enforced by management policies that control the execution of procedures that are applied whenever data are ingested or accessed. The procedures generate state information that defines the outcome of enforcing the management policy. The state information can be queried to validate assessment criteria and verify that the required collection properties have been conserved. The integrated Rule-Oriented Data System implements the data management framework required to support policy-based data management. Policies are turned into computer actionable Rules. Procedures are composed from a Micro-service-oriented architecture. The result is a highly extensible and tunable system that can enforce management policies, automate administrative tasks, and periodically validate assessment criteria. Table of Contents: Introduction / Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System / iRODS Architecture / Rule-Oriented Programming / The iRODS Rule System / iRODS Micro-services / Example Rules / Extending iRODS / Appendix A: iRODS Shell Commands / Appendix B: Rulegen Grammar / Appendix C: Exercises / Author Biographies
About the Author: Arcot Rajasekar is a professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a chief scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). Previously, he was at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, leading the Data Grids Technology Group. He has been involved in research and development of data grid middleware systems for over a decade and is a lead originator behind the concepts in the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and the integrated Rule Oriented Data Systems (iRODS), two premier data grid middleware developed by the Data Intensive Cyber Environments Group. Dr. Rajasekar has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park and has more than 100 publications in the areas of data grids, logic programming, deductive databases, digital library, and persistent archives. Reagan Moore (retired) was a professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, chief scientist for Data Intensive Cyber Environments at the Renaissance Computing Institute, and director of the Data Intensive Cyber Environments Center at University of North Carolina. He coordinates research efforts in development of data grids, digital libraries, and preservation environments. Developed software systems include the Storage Resource Broker data grid and the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System. Supported projects include the National Archives and Records Administration Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype, and science data grids for seismology, oceanography, climate, high-energy physics, astronomy, and bioinformatics. An ongoing research interest is use of data grid technology to automate execution of management policies and validate trustworthiness of repositories. Dr. Moore's previous roles include the following: director of the DICE group at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and manager of production services at SDSC. He previously worked as a computational plasma physicist at General Atomics on equilibrium and stability of toroidal fusion devices. He has a Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of California, San Diego (1978), and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1967). Chien-Yi Hou is a research associate at School of Information and Library Science (SILS) in University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also a member of the Sustainable Archives & Library Technologies (SALT) Laboratory and a member of the Data Intensive Cyber Environments (DICE) group. Chien-Yi Hou's interests include data grid, digital archiving, information management, and databases. Before joining SILS, he worked at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) as Digital Preservation Specialist. He has a master's degree in computer science from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and he received his bachelor's degree in computer and information science from the National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. Christopher A. Lee is assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He teaches classes in archival administration, records management, digital curation, understanding information technology for managing digital collec[1]tions, and the construction of digital repository rules. His research focuses on long-term curation of digital collections and stewardship (by individuals and information professionals) of personal digital archives.