Accessing data from different locations

There are a number of existing technologies which allow access to data in different locations (Web Services, FTP, OGSA-DAI). There are still however open questions and areas which need work. In certain situations there is no control over the system used to make the data available. In this case there is scope for providing a layer that translates between different methods of exposing resources.

Part of the problem when dealing with distributed resources is the additional complexity they add to any solution. The application has to deal with data in multiple sources, which may change over time; the number of resources may also change over time. A possible area of innovation is providing a layer which abstracts this complexity away from the application and allows them to ignore the distributed nature of the data and concentrate on solving their problem. This can tie in with the requirement for federation of data.