Abstract

The Italian Theoretical VO data center for simulated data.

Claudio Gheller (CINECA)

U. Becciani (INAF, OACt) R. Brunino (CINECA) A. Costa (INAF, OACt) P. Manzato (INAF, OAT) F. Pasian (INAF, OAT)

Astrophysical numerical simulations represent a valuable tool for verifying theories, analysing the development and the evolution of physical processes and for testing models. Present day computing systems represent virtual laboratories that can be used for virtual experiments. The INAF Trieste and Catania Observatories and the CINECA supercomputing center are presently committed to the development of the Italian Theoretical VO (ITVO). The goal is to develop a robust, trustworthy methodology for setting up a world-wide reference distributed infrastructure for effective sharing and access of astrophysical datasets coming from recently-performed, state-of-the-art numerical simulations of a total size in the magnitude of hundreds of terabytes up to petabytes. Furthermore, the ITVO aims to provide the necessary services and tools needed for the fast, effective and efficient access of this data for its exploration and analysis. This is a challenging task, since the datasets size often makes their transfer across the network unfeasible. Furthermore, the data volume could be so large, that local computing resources are not enough to proceed with further processing steps. So it is necessary to provide ways for fast, intelligent-previews to guide the prospective users in their scientific discovery by avoiding lengthy downloads. A possible solution is to provide a set of tools that allows the user to explore the data and the metadata in order to find out interesting features and to restrict the request to data that are characterised by such features. In some other cases, the dataset can be reduced by means of decimation or averaging procedures. In this way, the data volume that needs to be downloaded can become considerably smaller. An alternative solution is that of performing the data analysis directly at the data server, minimizing data movement. In this way the communication is restricted to questions and answers rather than moving the source data. ITVO is an initiative of the Italian Virtual Observatory (VObs.it) project and is coordinated with the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). Archive data organization and services are being developed by the ITVO team following VO compliant standards and adopting interoperable solutions. In this way the resulting infrastructure is extensible, flexible, and adaptable to a wide range of data, irrespectively of the specific astrophysical research area. As a result, the archive can grow well beyond the initial configuration and its services can be used by any data owner/provider which finds them interesting or useful. In this paper we will present the basic foundation concepts and elements which ITVO lays on and the present implementation status of the infrastructure, together with the development roadmap.

Mode of presentation: oral