At today's teleconference we agreed that we needed to firm up the definitions in our glossary of the terms Data Resource, Data Access, Data Transfer, Source and Sink.  Currently only Data Resource has a definition taken from the OGSA Glossary) as:
        An entity that can act as a source or sink of data together with its associated framework.

The confusion that was identified centered on the use of the terms "source" and "sink".  The above definition is using them in a fairly generic way while the Data Architecture document uses them to mean the source and sink of data transfers.  Here is stab at defining all 5 of these terms.  Once we have agreed on the definitions, we may need to do some minor edits to the architecture document as a result.

Data Access: Data access is any mechanism that allows an entity to identify data held by a data resource and receive that data from the data resource.

Data Resource: An entity that can act as a source or sink of data together with its associated framework.  By source we simply mean an entity that can originate data.  And by sink we simply mean an entity that receives data.

Data Transfer: A mechanism to move data from a source of data to a sink of data.

Source: A data resource that contains that data to be copied to a sink via a data transfer mechanism.

Sink: A data resource that receives the data copied by a data transfer mechanism from a source.

Allen Luniewski
IBM Cross Brand Services
IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory
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San Jose, CA 95141

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