Stellaris: An RDF-based Information Service for AstroGrid-D

Abstract

We present Stellaris, the information service of the community project AstroGrid-D. Stellaris is the core component of the AstroGrid-D middleware that enables scientists to share their resources, provides access to large datasets and integrates instruments such as robotic telescopes.\nBesides the many diverse types of resources, the information service also supports a wide range of use cases each using a specific schema for the metadata. In addition, Stellaris addresses the distributed and dynamic nature of collaborations in the astronomers’ community. Stellaris satisfies these requirements by adopting RDF and SPARQL for\nstoring and querying metadata. Our paper focuses on the requirements of the community, presents the architecture of the information service in detail and discusses experiences with the prototype already in use by partners within the project.