Develop and devise easy-to-use service interfaces

From GRDI2020

This is a GRDI recommendation; return to Main Page with all the challenges and recommendations

Context and Challenges

Often, a technological service’s usability, rather than its capabilities, leads to user acceptance of that service. Accordingly, storage interfaces like the (extremely powerful, but also extremely complicated) SRM (Storage Resource Management) protocol often lack adoption, whereas simple REST-based interfaces like those used in commercial clouds are being widely adopted.

Increasingly, an array of different data paradigms are being used in parallel and in interaction with each other. This includes file-based storage, relational databases, triple stores and other noSQL paradigms. In computing, noSQL is a term used to designate database management systems that differ from classic relational database management systems in some way. These data stores might not require fixed table schemas, they usually avoid joint operations, and they typically scale horizontally.

Recommendation

Develop and devise easy-to-use service interfaces, that are synched with usage patterns and business models.

Some of the parameters for defining the API include the paradigm (e.g. file-based, SQL, noSQL), the size of individual objects, and whether objects can or cannot be updated or disposed of. Existing successful interfaces include the Amazon S3 storage API for REST-based access, NFS and WebDAV for filesystem integration, and versioning systems like Dropbox (building on Amazon S3) or TurtleSVN (building on Subversion).

Stakeholders and Impact

Computer science researchers and usability experts should address this and synchronise with usage patterns and business models (cf. recommendation Define reference SLAs to cluster data retention requirements).