Connecting ALICE and EDG: A Bridge for Data Management

Ever wondered how scientists at CERN manage and share vast amounts of data? Enter AliEn and EDG, two powerful systems that help handle the data from the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. AliEn, short for ALICE Environment, is like a digital manager that submits jobs and keeps track of data across many computers. EDG, or European Data Grid, is another system that helps store and share this data. The challenge? Making these two systems talk to each other. This is where interoperability comes in. Imagine you're trying to understand a friend who speaks a different language. You need a translator, right? That's what the interface between AliEn and EDG does.Here's how it works: A few EDG machines run AliEn's software, acting as middlemen. AliEn sees EDG's resource broker as a single computing element and EDG's storage as one big storage element. This means data produced on EDG sites is registered in both systems' catalogues. Why both? Because AliEn uses its catalogue for managing data, while EDG ensures the data's integrity and access. A prototype of this interface has been successfully tested using ALICE's AliEn server and EDG's testbeds. This bridge between the two systems is crucial for making sure scientists can access and manage data efficiently, no matter where it's stored.