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This paper describes the architecture of the SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB). The SRB is middleware that provides applications a uniform API to access heterogeneous distributed storage resources including, filesystems, database systems, and archival storage systems. The SRB utilizes a metadata catalog service, MCAT, to provide a "collection"-oriented view of data. Thus, data items that belong to a single collection may, in fact, be stored on heterogeneous storage systems. The SRB infrastructure is being used to support digital library projects at SDSC. This paper describes the architecture and various features of the SDSC SRB.
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Baru et al. (2010) studied this question.