mounting data sources to the net via web services

[Heitzso <he...@bellsouth.net>]

Our branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
is researching mechanisms to mount distributed data sources
to the internet for querying and reporting.

I ran across the Global Grid Forum's, GGF,
	http://www.globalgridforum.org
Database Access and Integration Services Workgroup, DAIS-WG,
	http://www.globalgridforum.org/6_DATA/dais.htm
which has two key documents outlining requirements and specs
for mounting relational, xml, object and flat files on the
web using web service technology:

Grid Database Access and Integration: Requirements and Functionalities
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/grid-db/papers/DAIS:RF.pdf 

and

Grid Database Service Specification 
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/grid-db/papers/DAIS:StatementSpec.pdf 

There are two web service projects under development to 
implement the spec:

SPITFIRE, using RPC, http://spitfire.web.cern.ch/Spitfire/

and 

OGSA-DAI, using documents, 
http://umbriel.dcs.gla.ac.uk/NeSC/general/projects/OGSA_DAI/

I find this technology extremely exciting for the general 
purpose of mounting data sources on the net.

Our focus is to enable health research, in which natality, 
mortality, morbidity, environmental, weather, geographic, 
economic, racial, industrial, insurance, hospital, etc. data
can be queried in an integrated fashion.

I'm posting this tangent to the list because I assume other
individuals working with Axis might be interested in both the
general problem of mounting data sources, and perhaps the
specific problem of developing a query and reporting tool
for health research that functions over numerous distributed
data sources.  I would appreciate anyone interested in working
with us on the health research project to email me at my cdc
email address, xxh1@cdc.gov.

Thanks,
Heitzso
Information Technology Branch
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
xxh1@cdc.gov or heitzso@bellsouth.net