IceCube File Catalog

Abstract

IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino detector located at the south pole. Metadata for files in IceCube have traditionally been handled on an application by application basis, with no user-facing access. There has been no unified view of data files, and users often query the filesystem to locate files. Recently effort has been put into creating a unified view in a central metadata catalog. Going for a simple solution, we created a userfacing REST API backed by a NoSQL database. All major data producers add their metadata to this central catalog. Schema generation is identified as an important aspect of multi-application metadata services.