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SRB – The SDSC Storage Resource Broker – supports shared collections that can be distributed across multiple organizations and heterogeneous storage systems. The SRB can be used as a Data Grid Management System (DGMS) that provides a hierarchical logical namespace to manage the organization of data (usually files).

The SRB software infrastructure can be used to enable Distributed Logical File Systems, Distributed Digital Libraries, Distributed Persistent Archives, and Virtual Object Ring Buffers. The most common usage of SRB is as a Distributed Logical File System (a synergy of database system concepts and file systems concepts) that provides a powerful solution to manage multi-organizational file system namespaces.

SRB presents the user with a single file hierarchy for data distributed across multiple storage systems. It has features to support the management, collaboration, controlled sharing, publication, replication, transfer, and preservation of distributed data. The SRB system is middleware in the sense that it is built on top of other major software packages (file systems, archives, real-time data sources, relational database management systems, etc). The SRB has callable library functions that can be utilized by higher level software. However, it is more complete than many middleware software systems as it implements a comprehensive distributed data management environment, including end-user client applications ranging from Web browsers to Java class libraries to Perl and Python load libraries.